Thirteen Years
by QueenOfQuiet17
Summary: Thirteen years is plenty of time to extinguish a flame, or it could be plenty of time to strengthen the light. Because no action is meaningless, and no memory is forgettable. Grace/Karen. Now complete.
1. Kill The Last Romantic

"_Play back this tape, I swear you'll see  
>I only wanted you to be with me.<br>Kill the last romantic,  
>Then come back for me."<br>~Easyworld, "Kill the Last Romantic"_

_November 1998_

She flipped the tiny cassette with her fingers in the dark of the living room. The moonlight coming in from the balcony door gave the room an eerie blue-black tint to her surroundings, a color she loved and feared in equal measure. This color had been good to her. This color had been cruel to her. This color gave an odd shine to the cassette. The cassette felt weird on her nails every time they made contact. Her nails were in desperate need of a manicure. Maybe if she flipped this thing slowly enough it won't make a sound. Maybe if she flipped this thing quickly enough, it'll make a loud enough noise to wake Will up. Maybe Will was awake and had his ear to the door. Maybe Will was oblivious. She should be oblivious.

Funny how your train of thought runs off the track at every chance when you know you have an important decision at your feet, waiting to be picked up, waiting to be paid attention, waiting to be made.

Grace has had this cassette in her possession for roughly four years, and if she could tell you exactly what was on it, she would. But honestly, this is all she knew about what she held in her hands: the voice of a flame she had chased around for years was on the tape, a message that had been left on her answering machine four years ago, a week before she had finally told Danny that she would go out with him (and look where that got her). She knew that it was left after she had effectively ended whatever it was you could call their connection, and she knew the first three words of the message—"Gracie, it's me…"—before she frantically stopped the playback. She didn't want to know the rest, for fear of going back on her decision; she had been weakened at that point, she knew that much, but there was no way she was going to let that voice transfix her once again. It had gone on long enough.

Thirteen years ago, she met the one person who sparked a fire that would never go out, no matter how hard she tried to extinguish it. Karen Delaney—no, sorry, Karen _Walker_, she actually married the son of a bitch that started all of this in the first place—was a force to be reckoned with, always had been. But under the original guise of a friend, for however short that window of time she used the guise was, Grace couldn't see through what Karen had been feeding her.

It didn't make sense at first; they had only seen each other intermittently, large amounts of time would pass before they randomly met. Later on, shorter amounts of time would pass before they would hear each other's voices again—Grace had broken down and given Karen her phone number after they had expressed their frustration at the lack of appearances in each other's lives. But she got sucked in. It was Karen; everyone got sucked in. Thirteen years ago, it would have been nice to have that information. Thirteen years ago, she should have known that she would get tangled in the web.

But thirteen years ago, she probably would have willingly tangled herself anyway. It would make sense, it would be the logical conclusion; she's willingly tangling herself now, years after the fact.

She thought she was dreaming two months ago, when Karen walked into her office—and god, she hadn't aged a day in the four years it had been since that last night, but she did look broken down, unlike the vibrant, nothing-can-hurt-me woman that had originally introduced herself. Thousands of thoughts were running through her mind in the silence that lingered after Karen's heels had ceased clicking on the hardwood floors; she got the wrong address, she completely forgot about the woman she was staring at in the time they had been apart, she was going to tell Grace off for reasons she wasn't completely certain of. But Karen took a step forward and spoke in a meek voice, the only voice that really seemed appropriate here. "Grace," not Gracie, not now, not after everything crumbled, "I need this favor. Please."

Karen saw the ad in the paper Grace had placed for an assistant. She needed a place to get away from Stan for a while, and she'll do the work, she promised. She just didn't know where else to go, who else would actually take her on for the reasons she had. Grace had laughed, was working up a tirade, when Karen put her hand up to revitalize the silence. She chose her words carefully. "You've obviously moved on, unless that picture on your desk is some sort of oddly misplaced decoy. " At that moment, Grace had looked at the framed photo of herself wrapped in Danny's arms, as if she had to make sure it was still there. "You don't have to speak to me unless you absolutely have to. I'm not asking for anything more than sanctuary. And trust me, the last thing I wanted to do was ask you for a favor. I didn't want to put either of us in that position. But every other place I've tried laughed in my face. I had to try."

In that moment, she flashed back to the moment they met. After that disaster of a proposal, after having her heart broken, after being faced with it once again and in a blind fury, ran to any place that wasn't the one she was currently in. After calming down enough to see that a complete stranger had stopped to help her, for reasons she didn't understand but didn't question. She couldn't tell in that moment if the look in Karen's eyes was a result of sympathy or pity, but at that point, she didn't care. Karen was someone she could talk to, and although the circumstances were different, someone who knew where she was coming from.

It was comfortable. It was nice. It was enticing.

They slept together that night. Just once, they had promised each other. Do whatever you want and leave, at least there was an element of comfort and control. But then they ran into each other again. They made the same promise again. It was a cycle they couldn't get out of, not that they truly wanted to. And then the inevitable, followed by the breakdown.

And now, it could potentially start all over again.

She didn't know if she could handle that.

Grace saw the look in Karen's eyes, and despite her better judgment, she hired her on the spot, told her she could start when the weekend was over. On the surface, Karen was right. Grace had moved on with a man who had stuck around long enough to no longer be considered rebound. And until she had broken up with Danny, it seemed like their little arrangement at the office would be okay, like it could actually work out for the both of them. But then she was single again, and Karen was right there, directly in front of her. She couldn't help but let her mind wander.

Which brought her to tonight, her breaking point.

It wasn't as if she had let go completely. This thing had consumed her for thirteen years, and the fire was still blazing, even if she didn't want to admit it. She remembered those nights in blue-black Manhattan darkness, the bars and cigarettes, the moments when they actually tried. They brought her feelings that nothing else could. Which made her all the more frustrated that she had to face Karen every day (had to, as if she wasn't the one who set it into motion).

And all the silence, and all the skating around the issues, and all the false polite smiles had gotten to her. She wanted to tell Karen everything she didn't the last night they had together. There were no words that night, at least not from Karen and very little from Grace; it was easier to get her point across that way. The woman she was, the woman Karen had transformed her into, the woman she was now. It wasn't fair to put that solely on Grace's back. Karen deserved some of it, too.

God. She was making Karen out to be some wretched woman. That wasn't at all how she started out. She was a friend, but enough of a stranger to tell her personal things without being judged. She was a desire, something that was unexpected, but also unattainable. She was an intended one-night stand, something to help ease both of their woes but something to never happen again. She was a reunion, multiple times, that never got old and was always sweet. She was a repeat offender, making both of them into liars. She was a beautiful possibility. She was a deceiver. She was a breaker, smashing whatever was in her path. This was who Karen Walker was, start to finish.

But the main problem with the entire journey into Karen, from point A to point B? You could never fully figure all of that out until you were already in it.

And even though she had been with other people during the time that Grace had known her, it always came back to Karen. With Matt, with Paul, with Chase, with Danny, it always, always, came back to Karen.

Grace looked at the cassette in her hand and let out a sigh. If she was going to do it, she might as well do it now. She got up from the couch and tiptoed through the hallway, stopping at Will's door for a moment to listen in. She didn't hear any movement coming from the other side, but that in no way meant that she was safe. She walked to her room and shut the door quietly behind her before tossing the cassette on her mattress and digging out a box from underneath her bed.

She still hadn't gone through the things she packed when she moved out of Danny's apartment since Will took her in, but she knew exactly which box held the object she wanted, an old grey answering machine she had since she moved into her first apartment after college without roommates. This thing had played the messages of first dates and nagging parents, of best friends and apologetic souls. It had known Will's voice like it was its own, and it had helped in the erasure of it all, just so it could start over. And this time, it was going to play one final voice.

She put the cassette in the answering machine she had taken with her—she was the one who bought it in the first place; it was rightfully hers, and Danny had the cash to spare to buy another one—and pushed the play button.

"Gracie, it's me…"

And just like that, with the sound of Karen's voice filling the room and the sensation of worry that Will would hear, thirteen years came rushing back to her all at once, and they wouldn't stop.


	2. Talk To Me

"_Why won't you talk to me?  
>Didn't I know you yesterday?<br>Is it something I said to you?"  
>~Frogpond, "Talk to Me"<em>

_November 1985_

"No. We talk when I'm ready to talk, you got that? Until then, I don't want to see you."

Grace pushed past a speechless Will on her way out of her dorm. She heard the knock on the door and thought for a moment that it would be Ellen, wondering why her Thanksgiving trip back home ran a little short. No one on campus knew, at least not yet, and right now, she was trying to bask in the ignorance. And if Ellen was at her door, she could at least pass off her early arrival as a fight with Will, or a fight with her parents (which wasn't entirely far from the truth, but omission is a tricky road), and they would go grab a drink to make it all hazy enough to deal with. But she opened the door to find the root of her problems, and she didn't want to face him. In the course of an hour, she had gone from being in a new but wonderful three-month relationship, to getting engaged, to finding out that there was no attraction towards her at all.

She was not going to give him the satisfaction of a civil conversation.

In all honesty, had he come to her earlier and told her, she would have been far more calm and collected about his sexuality—sure, there would be an element of hurt in there somewhere, but it was still a new relationship, and they could still find a way to salvage a friendship out of the whole thing. But now, after proposing, after getting her hopes up, she was currently of the mindset that if she never saw him again, it wouldn't be such a bad thing. She tried to listen, she tried to feel his presence behind her as she stormed down the hall and down the stairs to get out of the building, but he hadn't followed her. Either he was respecting her wishes even though she recited them irrationally, or she scared him off with her presentation. Whatever works.

When she hit the cold November air, she instinctively put her hands inside the pockets of her coat, furrowed her brow in confusion when her right hit something. She pulled out the pack of cigarettes and lighter that Ellen had asked her to hold onto the last time they went out. Well. She won't miss one. Grace slipped a cigarette between her lips and concentrated on getting the lighter to spark, hoping the flame would warm her chilled fingers. She saw orange and welcomed the smoke filling her lungs, was almost sorry to let it go if not for the prospect of another drag. She could smell it around her, and took comfort in it, as if this were the confidant she never had, the one she could shamelessly unload her problems onto. This wasn't like her. She had never smoked before. Then again, she had never been proposed to, and then dumped, by a gay man, either.

Surprisingly enough, she had excellent skill in both.

A few blocks in whatever way she was going (she lost track of her direction as soon as she made a move on the Manhattan concrete), and the neon beer signs in the window on the corner told her that she had found her way to a bar with questionable integrity, but it sold alcohol all the same, so she didn't care. At this point, she just wanted to feel the smoke leave her chest and chaser of cheap beer coursing through her body. The neon was so bright that Grace thought it could maybe, just maybe, take her mind off of everything. She opened the door and took a step inside.

Too many people. No, that wasn't the issue. It was the fact that there were too many people that she knew. She didn't walk that far from her dorm building to the bar; even though she had never been here before, it was obvious that it was a college bar, a regular haunt for her classmates. She saw the girls who usually sat in the back of their math class at the bar chatting up one of the bartenders; the two guys who roomed down the hall from her over by the pool table, one of them lining up a shot. Behind her, she heard a "Hey, Grace," from a girl coming in from the cold; once the girl made her way towards the bar, she realized it was Stephanie from her Fundamentals of Design class. This wasn't the place to take solace. Someone would see her, they would ask what was wrong. She needed to be someplace where nobody knew who she was, and nobody cared.

She had only been in the bar for three minutes, but the night seemed to have gotten colder. Grace grasped for the cigarettes again, lit one as quickly as she good before she put her back against the brick wall of the bar. Why was this so hard? This was New York City, for god's sake. It was so easy to get lost in a sea of unfamiliar people; why couldn't she do that now? She wanted to know of a place where she could hide.

Luckily, she would soon be looking into the eyes of a woman who would tell her about one.

* * *

><p>"No. We talk when I'm ready to talk. Until then, I don't want to see you."<p>

She wanted to get the hell out of his house. He claimed that his wife wasn't there, but could she really believe anything he said anymore? Two months ago, when she met Stanley Walker, he said that he was divorced. He said that she was the only one, even though he knew that it wasn't necessarily true on her end (when she met him, Karen had hooked three other people in—one was definitely intentional, but she wasn't so sure on the others—but none of them held a candle to him, and she resolved to, eventually, break it off with the others). And like a fool willing to have her heart kicked around, she believed him. And now that she had finally decided that he was the one she wanted to be with, now that she had let the others go in what she hoped was an easy and hardly painful way, she came to realize that it was all for nothing. Karen turned on her heels and rushed for Stan's front door, not daring to look him in the eye anymore.

"Karen, that's not fair," Stan said to her back. "You weren't completely faithful to me, either."

"There's one hell of a difference. I was honest about it." She shut the door behind her to the sounds of Stan yelling—"Talk to me!"—and longed to feel the November air through her hair.

She didn't want to go home. There wasn't any point. No one would be waiting for her on her couch, not like there used to be, not anymore. There would be no message on her answering machine asking for her presence, no note under her door revealing the location for the next rendezvous. There would only be the presence of her horribly vicious thoughts, and she did not want to be alone with them.

Karen blindly chose a direction to move and by reflex fished in her purse for the pack of cigarettes that was no longer there. God, she wished she hadn't wasted her last smoke on the trip to Stan's house. It was foolish. Sure, she needed something to calm her nerves, something to make her feel better before she inevitably felt worse. But now, she would kill to feel the smoke in her body. She could feel her fingers twitching inside her coat pocket, longing to hold the one thing she desired between them. It was rough and ridiculous, how quickly and how strongly she became addicted to them, but when it helped her to cope, she wasn't going to say no to comfort.

She walked into a part of uptown Manhattan that she wasn't too familiar with. Maybe that was the reason she was drawn to it in the first place; everything that had once been familiar to her fell apart, all the safety was gone, so what was the use of trying to find something that's already lost? She found Columbia, realized she was now in college territory, a place she hadn't entered in ten years. And all of a sudden, she wished she could turn back time to return to her dorm years. Love was experimental then, not complicated. You'd find someone over a weekend and spend the night, and by Monday it was like it never happened. And if something clicked between two people, the experiment worked. Most of the time, though, it failed. But those were the years when you didn't mind it.

It bugged the hell out of Karen now.

She followed a group of college students down the sidewalk to what appeared to be a bar on the corner of the street. It wasn't familiar, it wasn't secure. But it was different. It was someplace other than home.

It was perfect.

After being blinded by the flashy neon in the window, she found a woman with a cigarette between her lips and curls in her red hair that couldn't possibly be wound any tighter. She looked beautiful, but broken and trying to hide it with an effort that was obviously failing her, even if she didn't want to admit it. She reminded Karen of herself in that moment, and Karen felt compelled to at least say something to her.

"Can I bum one?" Not exactly the best opening line in the world, but it was a start. And she did need a cigarette. She watched as the woman locked eyes with her, gave her a silent nod, and handed over a pack and a lighter. Karen felt the smoke hit her lungs and closed her eyes to savor it before she spoke again. "Are you going in?"

The woman gave a shrug. "I don't know. There's too many people in there I don't feel like seeing."

Karen looked at her for a moment, then, in a flash decision that went against her original plans for the evening, went to hail a cab at the curb. When one slowed to a stop for her, she turned to look at the woman, her back still to the brick of the bar. "You're better than this place," she said. "Come on. I'll take you somewhere nicer."

The red head shook her head and said, "Thanks though." Karen knew what it was. That childhood fear of talking to strangers still holds us, no matter how hard we try to shake it. And she didn't blame her. If she were in those shoes, she would be hesitant to take the offer. But still, Karen tried one more time.

"I'll pay."

Well. She couldn't say no to that. Karen held the door open for her as she slid into the cab and waited to be taken away. Because, when it came down to it, neither of them wanted to be anywhere near here.

Any place was better than this.


	3. Between The Bars

"_Drink up with me now and forget all about  
>The pressure of days, do what I say<br>And I'll make you okay and drive them away  
>The images stuck in your head<br>People you've been before that you don't want around anymore  
>That push and shove and won't bend to your will<br>I'll keep them still"  
>~Elliot Smith, "Between the Bars"<em>

_November 1985_

Grace slipped the olive off of the toothpick and watched it float in her martini. She didn't drink these. Ever. But this strange yet compassionate woman took her to a bar that was too upscale for her to ever normally frequent on her own, and she felt compelled to order a drink that seemed to match the atmosphere. When they first walked in, Grace saw the general attire of the people at the bar, at the surrounding tables, and immediately froze. She was not supposed to be here, she could tell. She looked at her oversized sweater and jeans before shifting her gaze to the woman who brought her here and stated the obvious.

"I'm not dressed for this."

Karen looked at her and laughed at the red head's comment in a way that wasn't condescending, but genuinely surprised that that was her first thought. "Honey, most of the people in here have already drunk themselves half blind. The ones who haven't could care less what you're wearing." It was true. Karen took this girl to a bar that Stan had introduced her to, and while it didn't fulfill her original urge to be someplace unfamiliar, it seemed as though it would serve a different purpose that was equally important. And the assessment she gave to the customers here was fairly accurate, at least from what she saw. So what did it matter?

They sat in silence after they first ordered, neither making a move to break it. What was there to say? Grace had accepted this woman's offer for a few drinks that she desperately needed, but she still had no idea who she was. There was no way around the awkward small talk that Grace usually did everything in her power to avoid if she opened her mouth. And the comment about the way she was dressed embarrassed her enough to want to keep quiet for the rest of the night. But, as always, things didn't go quite as she planned.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Karen watched as the sound of her voice made the red head shift her confused glance from her drink to her eyes. There was some sort of slick beauty in that action that she couldn't quite pin down, but she knew it was there. "Talk about what?"

"Whatever's weighing your mind down so much. Whatever it was that made me feel like we had something in common." Silence. It wasn't going to be easy, even with the alcohol in their systems. Karen sighed and shook her head. "Fine. I'll go first. I had the love of a number of people, people who would have done anything to stay. That's never happened to me before, not like that. But I threw it all away because I decided I loved a man who wasn't in that mix. And it turns out he had been lying to me all this time. He's married, and he waited until now to tell me. We had been fooling around for a few months, but it was obvious that things were getting serious."

"Wow, that's rough." College sympathy for a problem Grace couldn't necessarily grasp, but at that point that was all she could give. And then, before she could even think it through, "I can beat that."

Karen let out a laugh. It wasn't that she doubted this woman's statement. It was the confidence that she suddenly whipped out for display. "So that's it? All I had to do to get you to talk to me was to tell you my problems?" She could see her let a little smile crawl across her face. "The floor is yours," Karen said with a smile. "Go for it."

"I took my boyfriend upstate to spend Thanksgiving with my family. We had been going out for about three months, it seemed serious. It only seemed natural to introduce him to my parents. I thought it was going to be fairly painless. And it was, until he proposed to me, only to come out of the closet forty-five minutes later. I found him outside my door tonight, and I didn't want to talk to him, so I decided to take a walk. That's how I ended up at the bar where you found me."

Grace took a deep breath and let it out, like she had just cleansed her soul. Maybe it was a start, but it was nowhere near clean. She grabbed her glass and took a swig of her martini, felt it go down hard in her throat as she heard the bottom of the glass clink against the surface of the bar. Suddenly, she felt a warmth surrounding her free hand, and noticed that the woman who had invited her here had placed her own hand on top in an attempt to give some compassion, no matter how small.

It felt nice. She wasn't going to lie.

"Sounds like we're not the best at this sort of thing." Karen offered the red head a smile. "But at least I'm in good company."

This wave of silence was different. It wasn't one out of awkwardness or embarrassment. They couldn't quite put their finger on it, but the way this new atmosphere felt right. In that moment, everything felt right. Grace looked down at the woman's hand, which was still resting on hers, and could not stop thinking about how soft this woman's touch was. It wasn't anything like Will's. His touch was delicate, sure, but it was certainly rougher than this. And she knew he couldn't help it.

But she had to admit, she seemed to prefer a woman's touch (or was that the drink talking? She did just order herself another one, watched as the bartender poured another glass and slid it under her nose. Whatever the reason, it really worked).

"Whatever," Grace suddenly murmured. God, that sounded juvenile. She tried to salvage. "It's not something I like to talk about."

"That's why we're here. To help you forget about what was making the look in your eyes so dim."

Grace couldn't help but smile at her generosity, her sincerity. But she thought about the reason this woman was drawn to her in the first place; there was something in Grace's disposition that she could relate to. And while she thought she had it worse than just about anybody, this woman was having a tough go of it as well. "But what about you?"

"Honey, I've been battling demons for as long as I can remember. It's nothing new. It's not ideal, but it's nothing I can't handle." Karen watched as the red head slipped her hand out of the grasp it was in and captured the hand that once held it. And in that moment, Karen couldn't help herself. "But thank you for being concerned. It's been a long time since anyone has been genuine about it." In a swift motion, she lifted the red head's hand to her lips, planted a soft kiss on it before she realized what she was doing. She pushed her hand away from her lips in an instant, and winced at what she perceived to be her mistake. "God, I'm sorry. I didn't mean…"

"No, don't apologize." Grace's voice was soft in the air, reassuring. "I liked it."

That had to be the drink. _I am not myself tonight_, she thought. She had never once had the thoughts she now had in her mind. First the touch of this woman's hand, then the kiss. In any other situation, Grace would have been able to shrug it off, and not think twice about it. But tonight was different. Tonight, she had been thinking of Will, how it was so easy for him to cast her off for other men (years later, she would realize that Will's situation was far from easy, but when she was so close to it, she couldn't see that). Who's to say it wouldn't be easy for her to turn to another woman?

Besides, it wasn't as though she had lied. She did like it. A part of her just wished that the kiss had landed higher on her body. (Maybe it wasn't the martini talking…)

Karen grinned and made a move to slide her seat closer to the red head. She couldn't quite pin this girl down into one notion, one personality. At one moment, she had been stand-offish and silent, and in the next, she openly welcomed a little flirtation—and Karen had to admit, there was a little flirtation in the kiss, and while she wondered where this sudden attraction came from, she quelled her thoughts when she realized that she wasn't the only one who was attracted. Suddenly, she wanted to see how far she could take it; her guess was as far as she wanted it to go. How quickly this instant mix friendship had turn into something that could be so easily ruined, but neither of them seemed to mind it. Karen let her hand fall to the red head's thigh, let it rest for a moment to try to read the girl's face, try to get inside her thoughts. But the girl surprised her; she made it easy.

Grace grabbed the woman's hand, started slowly sliding it along her thigh, leaned in towards her…

"Last call."

Karen and Grace looked at their empty glasses with a hint of disappointment at the call of the bartender. This couldn't be it. It was too anti-climactic for it to be any sort of ending. Karen let out a loud sigh and said, "Damn it. I don't want to go home yet. I can't deal with home yet."

Grace looked at her in the eye in all seriousness and brushed her hand along the woman's shoulder. "Do you trust me?" she asked. A heavy question to ask someone you just met, but their encounter tonight had been anything but light. Nothing was out of bounds at this point, nothing off limits. And while her eyes kept the same intensity they held when she uttered those words, Grace let a smirk play on her face as the woman nodded.

"Then come with me."

Karen matched the smirk she had been given, reached in her purse before putting enough cash for their tab and a tip on the bar and feeling the red head's hand slide down her arm to land in her palm. And just as easily as she had led the girl into this place, the girl had led her out. And the girl didn't care if it was the drink talking.

As long as it was her lips moving, she was fine with it.


	4. Love Me Like You Know Me

"_You don't know what you don't until you can  
>I never knew to miss what I never had<br>Love me like you know me  
>Kiss me like you can<br>Touch me like you own me  
>Look me in the eye<br>Tell me who I am"  
>~Amanda Kravat, "Love Me Like You Know Me"<em>

_November 1985_

The place was perfect for a moment like this. There would be no connection to this moment, to her, to any of it, afterwards, if she didn't want a connection. And since she had never done anything like this before, there was a good chance that she wouldn't want a connection afterwards. Not because she didn't like this woman, or that she was embarrassed about her first venture into the world as a single woman, but because she would have no clue what she was doing, and there was no way to hide it. And she hoped this woman would be kind about it.

Dan was one of Grace's friends from Columbia, a senior in the theatre program she had met by chance, who slipped a spare key to his apartment under the door of her dorm room. Before she packed her bags and left Schenectady, she dialed his number, longing to hear a voice that didn't pierce her like every other voice forcing a way through her ears. And, as always, his voice was a calm and understanding one. "I decided to go visit family after all. At least I escaped the horror that's always the dining room table at Thanksgiving. I'll stop by your building before the bus station tonight and slide my key under your door. If you want to get away from campus and collect your thoughts, I'll be gone for the rest of the week. Make yourself at home." Grace loved the gesture, but didn't plan on using the key; she merely put it in her pocket for safekeeping until he got back.

That was, until now.

Grace did not want to bring this woman back to her dorm room. If anything was to kill the mood, it would certainly be the horribly young way in which she was living. So when she hailed a cab, she asked the driver to take them to an address in Greenwich Village. And unlike her other actions tonight, she thought this one through. She reached her friend's door—the thought that this woman believed that it was Grace's apartment was not lost on her, but for now, this was how it had to be; if this went beyond tonight, she would fill her in—and felt a warm and gracious kiss on the nape of her neck as she opened the door.

Karen spun the red head to face her and plunged her lips against her chest so that the girl dropped the keys on the hardwood in surprise. Grace took her face in her hands and led her to her lips, tasted a sweetness that was unlike any other. In a moment, she got a thought that should have surprised her, but didn't faze her in the least.

_If it's always like this, I could get used to it._

Grace tried to keep their lips together for as long as she could, because she knew that if the air of this strange apartment hit them, she would over-talk this situation, something she had always had a habit of doing. A stream of words spilling from her mouth in an attempt to make a certain environment more comfortable when, in actuality, it only made things more awkward. And she did not want to mess this up. Even if it only lasted for the rest of the night, she did not want to mess it up.

Something in her life had to go the way it was supposed to.

Grace backed the woman up against the closed front door. She could smell gardenia on her neck and the martini on her breath in the second she pulled away. Oh, god, she shouldn't have pulled away. The woman started planting kisses on Grace's shoulder, leaving her lips exposed in a way that Grace fully dreaded. It shouldn't be that hard, keeping your mouth shut. But when it's so quiet, when the silence becomes so thick, and there's not enough history between two people for the silence to be a comfortable one, there's always that urge to make things better when they weren't broken. Grace felt it in the back of her throat, as lips made contact with her collarbone, lingering for a moment before continuing on their trail. And as hard as she tried, she couldn't keep it down.

"If you want to leave after, I won't get mad." Well. That just killed it. She didn't know why she even tried; she was merely postponing the inevitable. She watched as the woman locked eyes with her, and she held her breath waiting for the response she was sure was going to come.

Karen smirked and brushed her fingers through the red head's hair. Maybe that wasn't a mood killer after all. Maybe it was good. Please let it be good. "Are you going to talk," she murmured into her ear, "or are you going to show me where the bed is?"

Shit.

One of the easiest and most obvious elements of this plan, and it slipped Grace's mind that she had never been in this apartment before. How could she possibly play this off as her own home? Don't fret, Grace. Don't let her in on your secret. Be cool. Just go for a door, hope that it's the right one. She slid her hands underneath the woman's blouse, discovering that her skin was just as soft underneath her clothes (did it taste just as sweet?), and pulled her in the direction of the hallway. The second door on the right was closed while all the others were opened; if she had to make a guess, that was the bedroom. It would make sense; sure, she was told to make herself at home, but a bedroom is the one place in the house to make your own, that holds one hundred percent of your privacy. And Grace was about to invade that privacy for a thrill that would be gone by morning.

Sorry, Dan.

One hand on the door knob, the other around the woman's waist, Grace burst through the door and was relieved to find a bed that was dressed in a way that was easy to pass off as her own. But although she had been the one to take charge up until this point, she wanted to freeze up now. This was the part in which she had no experience. And while she hoped that this woman couldn't sense it, Grace knew that she probably did. But everyone had to start somewhere. And why should that be embarrassing?

It was true that Karen sensed a bit of hesitation in the red head's actions, and she decided to play it off as nerves. No matter. She liked to take charge when it came to moments like these, anyway. The girl landed on the mattress with Karen not far behind and their lips brushed against each other as her fingers travelled down to the button of the girl's jeans. When she pulled away, she saw the red head's eyes staring intently at her fingers, the button of her jeans, like a deer in the headlights. Karen let go, and propped herself on the mattress with one arm on either side of the girl, hovering over her as she posed her question.

"Are you sure you want to do this?"

There it was, Grace. If you want an out, take it. You don't have to do it. You don't have to show your inexperience. You don't necessarily owe her the truth, but don't you owe it to yourself?

"Of course. Don't stop now."

In the blue-black glow of the bedroom, Grace saw the woman's smile, and took it as a reassurance that everything was under control. What she told her was the truth. She didn't want to stop. Even if it was out of her hands, she didn't want it to stop. She felt the denim of her jeans slip away from her legs, and she didn't want it to stop. She felt the tug of her shirt over her head and she didn't want it to stop.

She felt the touch, oh god that touch, that heart-stopping touch, down her stomach to its final destination, and she didn't want it to stop.

It was never like this before, not when Grace had been with men. And while she didn't have much to go on, she knew that this thrilled her in a way she had never known possible. She didn't know it could be like this. Suddenly, she wished she hadn't have said those words on leaving, just before they got to the bedroom. _If it's always like this, I could get used to it._ She was used to it now, she wanted it always. And she wanted it to come from this woman. Maybe it was the drink, maybe it was that she was on the rebound, but this was what she wanted, no matter how irrational.

Maybe it was the excitement of the moment. That was something that had gotten her in the past. Or maybe it was the thrill that comes with something that is out of the ordinary from your normal routine. But whatever it was, when they settled into sleep, Grace wrapped inside the woman's arms, she still wanted it. And that had to mean something.

Even if it meant disappointment, which it almost always does.

* * *

><p>In the morning, Karen took the red head's words about leaving for the truth, and quietly slipped out the door of the apartment while she was still asleep, as the sun was just coming up over Manhattan. As the cab saved her from the early morning chill, Grace's eyes fluttered open, and she found foreign red sheets covering her bare skin, and for a moment, she was afraid of the thought of waking up in a place she didn't know. Once she began to wake up further, she realized that she was here of her own free will, she started to piece together what had happened. She realized why she woke up alone.<p>

Karen was halfway home when she made the full realization, and winced at her carelessness. Grace sat up like a shot in bed, and put her face in her hands when she put the final piece together. The fact was unavoidable. And they had no one to turn to who would help them hash this dilemma out.

They had slept with a woman whose name they didn't know.

If this was what getting back at Stan meant, Karen failed.

If this was what it all led to, Grace didn't want it anymore.


	5. Broken Voices

"_I can make you move against your will  
>Don't it make you sad to lose control?<br>Every single thought of yours distracted  
>Broken voices, I stunt your growth"<br>~Ari Hest, "Broken Voices"_

_December 1986_

It was all a fluke. Some freak happening that just would not occur again. It had to be, because she could not reproduce it, no matter how hard she tried. And, damn it, did she ever try. At every turn, she tried, even though the morning after, she told herself she didn't want this anymore. But nothing could match that beautiful encounter last Thanksgiving, with the woman who never gave her name. And she couldn't figure out what it was about her that made her desires twist like that.

Grace was at turns intrigued and horrified by the way that one night had consumed her for the past thirteen months. She remembered certain aspects, but never the event in its entirety. She remembered the way the bedroom, the whole apartment really, was cast in a blue-black tint that was as bold as her actions. She remembered how the woman's lips tasted. She remembered how that touch made her feel (god, how could she ever forget that? That would be engraved in her mind until the day she died). She remembered that the woman had dark hair that fell lower on her body than she had ever seen. But she found herself starting to slip on her features. All the feelings were there, and she loved the fact that they wouldn't go away after all this time, but she couldn't remember this woman's eyes, or her smile.

Then again, she wasn't necessarily focusing on her eyes or her smile when they were in the moment.

Either way, it was the memory of how she felt that pushed her to do everything she did in the past year when it came to her love life. She wanted to recreate that moment with someone else, she wanted to feel that again. It was almost like a drug to her; once she had a hit, she was dying to get it just one more time, and then another after that. And while it certainly helped her to get over her failed relationship with Will, that wasn't the reason why she craved it so badly, she was sure of it. A couple of months after that Thanksgiving, she found herself in the arms of a man who, by all accounts, was a great guy. But as soon as they got to the blue-black night that originally disguised itself as déjà vu, Grace was disappointed to discover that the way she felt was nowhere near the way that woman made her feel. And it would stay in her mind constantly, to the point that she would have to bow out of the relationship.

A month after, she caught the attention of a girl in one of her required courses, and she thought that that was the solution. Of course it was the answer. It made sense; she couldn't feel that way with a man because she initially felt it with another woman. So she went out with that girl. And then another. And then another. And one more after that, so desperate to believe that this would resolve everything. But she didn't feel it at all.

She figured it out eventually. It wasn't the gender of the person that made it happen, even though it took a long time to make herself see that. It was the person herself. It was all because of her that Grace was doing this. But even though she was nowhere near finding that woman again (whether it was conscious or not, they made sure that it would be a near impossible task of finding each other afterwards), she wouldn't stop going after that feeling. It was because of that woman that she would keep going.

It scared her to make the realization that she was not the one who truly had control of her body in times like these. It was the woman that determined her actions for her. And she liked to think that she wasn't moving against her will. But if she hadn't have taken that offer a year ago, would she be in this predicament now?

And now, she was brought back to the scene of the crime, the flashy neon college bar she was standing outside the night she lost all control.

A couple of weeks ago, she ran into Will for the first time while shopping for a few things at the grocery store to make a small Thanksgiving dinner in Manhattan. And after the initial awkward small talk, they slowly started to get into a new, but surprisingly nice groove that made her think that they could pull a friendship out of the rubble of their past relationship. He asked her to meet for a drink, and before she could suggest a place, he told her to meet him here. He couldn't know what this place held for her, and she wasn't about to let it show. She could see Will's eyes as he watched the bartender rest their drinks on the surface of the bar. He smiled in a perplexed way and faced her.

"A martini? Really?"

It was an odd choice in a college bar filled with cheap beer. Truth be told, she started ordering them more and more, as if that were a legitimate connection to the night she came alive, until she found herself automatically spitting out a martini order in any bar. Grace tried to hide the anxiousness in her eyes from him and shrugged off his comment. "I was in the mood for one."

Will took a swig from his beer and smiled. "So," he started, slightly shaky. It had been a year since they had seen each other, and it wasn't in the best light back then. "What have you been up to?" He scoffed at his own comment, almost in embarrassment. "I'm sorry, I know that's probably not the best conversation starter in this situation."

"No, you're fine." Grace drew a finger along the rim of her glass and sighed. "What have I been up to? Since that Thanksgiving?" What could she possibly say? There was no way he could understand it if she tried to explain. _Well, after I found you at my door trying to apologize, I went off, met a woman, had a one-night stand, and have been trying to replicate it ever since, despite my best intentions_. She tried to sugar-coat it without lying. "Nothing exciting."

It was the truth. The encounters she's had after that Thanksgiving had been less than thrilling, didn't need acknowledgement. Suddenly, she wanted the spotlight off of her. She didn't want to talk about herself, for fear of her actions spilling over the bar. Quickly, she asked, "But what about you? Catch me up. Tell me what's been going on." She saw the look on Will's face, and reassured him, "I'm fine, really. It's been a year. I'm okay with it."

Grace nursed her martini as Will eased their way into what his life has been for the past year. And although she fully intended on being present for this conversation, she found her thoughts wandering off once again to be with that woman.

Always wanting to be with that woman.

* * *

><p>She found herself moving against her will tonight.<p>

She was fine for the majority of this year, although Stan's mindset didn't necessarily help at all. He still hadn't made any move to separate his life from the wife he supposedly no longer loves. And for a while, Karen fell into a disturbing thought process: if she and Stan worked so well when she didn't know about his marriage, what's the difference now? His wife was merely an idea to her; she had never met this woman, so why should she start interfering now? She settled into not just tolerance, but acceptance of the situation with an ease that should have scared her, but didn't in the slightest. It went on for over a year.

Tonight, though, she woke up.

This was not okay. This was not how she should live, complacent with being the other woman trying to get this man off of the sinking ship of his marriage and always failing. It was true that somewhere inside of her, Karen loved this man. But being stood up for a date night while he decides to mend one crack in a nearly shattered life with his wife turned the lights on in her mind, and she finally saw the truth. This wasn't the part that occurred against her will. No, she needed to make this realization for herself. And she was relieved that she was finally pulled out of the spell. She wasn't exactly sure how to handle it now that she could see clearly, but at least it was a step. A step she made happen. It was the almost magnetic pull towards that college bar that she couldn't control.

She heard those broken voices in her ear all night, wavering even after they've settled into place. They started out as whispers, trying to coax her to move, and they grew louder and louder until she finally gave in. In all honesty, Karen hadn't given much thought to the one-night stand she had last Thanksgiving. Sure, the red head was in her mind for a couple of weeks, maybe a month, after the fact, but she knew she wasn't going to see her again, and there was nothing she could do about it. But tonight, the red head walked right into the forefront of her mind—Karen was surprised that she could remember her features perfectly—and wouldn't leave. She loved the excitement of it all, she loved the carelessness that made them both feel so light. She loved the way she could make the red head feel good.

And soon enough, with the right amount of uncertain encouragement from broken voices, she found herself walking on the same path she took that fated November night. The same chilled air, the same neon lights. The same aversion to going in that she had the first time. The only exception was that now, she opened the door. Now, she went inside. Now, she was on a mission.

She in no way expected to find the red head tonight. But maybe if she was surrounded by the place where it all started, the spark that Karen felt that night would come back to her. She had been looking for something to light that spark again, and enough time had gone by for her to realize that if Stan was trying, it wasn't hard enough. Or maybe he just didn't care. Either way, she realized that she would have to go out and search for it on her own if she ever wanted to experience it again. She looked around at the college kids with nothing better to do than drink two-dollar beer and waste their night. Karen walked up to the bar, about to order a drink, when a realization stopped her in her tracks.

It wasn't the place that lit her up. It was the girl, always the girl. Like a lot of things in her life, this wasn't going to work. She hadn't even set foot in this place last year. What possibly made her think that this was a good idea? Karen turned around to leave when she saw a man and a woman with their backs turn towards her ready to leave, the man with his arm around the woman in a way that filled strangers in that there was a strong connection there. That was all that she wanted.

She couldn't tell by the back of her head and the looser curls that fell down to her shoulders. But if she had just seen them turn around, she would have realized that the girl was, in fact, her red head. But Karen knew her features.

Maybe if she gets another chance, she can make it work.


	6. Come Over Here

"_Something tells you, you should go  
>Deep down you have always known<br>Something sweet is on the other side  
>Mama's gonna cry for you<br>Papa might disown you  
>You are getting ready for the ride<br>So won't you come over here?"  
>~Sarah Bettens, "Come Over Here"<em>

_February 1987_

Even though it wasn't under the expected circumstances, at least Grace got the chance to spend Valentine's Day with him.

They were both single by the time the fourteenth rolled around, and since their friendship was growing stronger and stronger, Will called her up and asked her to join him for dinner. What was the harm in that? Grace dressed in a skirt that wasn't too formal, and waited until she heard the knock on her door. It wasn't until she opened the door to find him with a smile on his face and his jacket draped over his arm that she realized the last time they faced each other like this was the night he tried to explain himself, the night she ran off to the bar. Funny how time can turn you to the other end like that. He wanted this to resemble as much of a date as possible, in an attempt to make it slightly less depressing that they were both without that lover to share the day with. He was going to pick her up, he was going to make the reservations. He was going to pay. And since Grace thought that she had overcome the things that had hindered her before, she went along with it, thinking it would be a nice way to spend her evening.

That was, until they stepped inside the restaurant.

It was foolish of her to think that she wouldn't be bombarded by couples tonight. Couples in love. She thought, at the least, she would see a few who were like them, friends trying to cope with a holiday that is so obviously meant for two. But when they walked into the restaurant that Will had chosen—something far nicer than she ever would have expected—she was instantly hit with candlelit lovers trying to wring as much romance from the night as humanly possible. And as soon as she sat down, Grace was hit with the "what if" questions. What would have happened if she and Will were still together, if he hadn't realized who he truly was yet, or if he was who Grace thought he was the entire time? Would they be like the couple in the corner who reach across the table just to feel the touch of their partner's hand? Or maybe they would be like the couple who just sat down across the room, sitting on the same side of the booth in order to stay as close to each other as they could. At least they wouldn't be who they are now.

Because right now, they were exes masquerading for the sake of the day, and it suddenly became incredibly awkward—too much so for her to want to handle. But bless Will. He was trying his damndest to act like nothing was wrong, when Grace was certain that he felt it too. And she appreciated it, she truly did.

She just didn't know how much of it she could take.

Will was talking about something easy to zone in and out from as the waiter cleared their plates and she swished the remaining wine in her glass around. She was ready for the check, hoping it would come soon, when all of a sudden, a voice pulled her out of her thoughts of leaving.

"I like the way you wear your hair now."

That unmistakable voice, the unusual choice of opening line. It was one person and one person only. Grace looked up and matched the voice to the woman that sparked the fire that she couldn't put out. Too fast for her to control, she found herself blurting out an, "Oh my god. Is it really you?"

The woman went to extend a hand towards Will, either unwilling to answer the question or unaware of the fact that it was ever uttered. "I'm Karen," she said. Will was the only one who didn't know that she was actually introducing herself to both Grace and him.

"Will. It's nice to meet you. So how do you know Grace?" Did it jar Karen to know what Grace's name was? If it did, she didn't show it, simply smiled before she replied.

"Well, it's been a long time since I've seen her. But she helped me out during a particularly rough time. I don't want to keep you two, I just wanted to say a quick hello. It was nice to see you again, Grace." Her name sounded exotic and enticing in Karen's mouth, and when Grace saw the look in her eyes, she couldn't help but gravitate towards her as she's walking away.

She could hear Will faintly as he went through the generic "She seems nice" small talk, but her eyes followed Karen as she moved to the bar in the back of the restaurant, turned, and let a smirk play on her face when she saw that Grace had her eyes on her. There had to be a way to go to her without Will knowing. It wasn't as though she was embarrassed of her attraction, and certainly she would tell him in any other circumstance. It was the fact that she ran into bed with this woman the moment after Will broke her heart. She suddenly felt eternally grateful to Karen for being so vague about how they knew each other. It made Grace trust her fully, even though she didn't know her at all.

It made her want to know her.

Abruptly, Grace stood up, much to the concern of Will. "I just need to run to the bathroom quickly. I'll be right back." That seemed like a safe enough excuse. She watched as Will nodded before returning his glance to his drink before quickening her pace to the back of the restaurant. Karen's eyes followed her as she came closer. "How did you know it was me?" she asked when she was finally within earshot.

"I never forgot what you looked like. That night will forever be in my memory. Your boyfriend seems nice." Of course. She couldn't know. But before Grace had a chance to explain it all, Karen reached for Grace's hand. That soft touch unlike any other embraced her skin once again, and she was transported back to that bedroom in the Village. Before Grace could ask the inevitable question, Karen told her, "The guy I was telling you about? I'm still with him. But nothing's changed. He's with his wife tonight. I just decided I needed a drink, so I ended up here." She smiled and pulled Grace a little closer. "Come on," Karen said softly. "Follow me. I don't think we'd want him to see this." Karen led Grace to the women's single bathroom and locked the door behind her.

Grace put out her hand and rested them at arm's distance on Karen's shoulders. "He's not my boyfriend. Remember the story I told you when we met?" Karen nodded. "That's him." A moment of silence went by before Grace got the courage to speak again. "You've been controlling my actions all this time," she said. There was no way to transition into this conversation, however one-sided it was going to be, but she had to say it. "I've been looking everywhere for what I felt. But you're the only one who has it."

Before she could say anything else, Karen's lips pressed up against hers and her hands travelled along Grace's back. You never truly know what you're craving until you've reached the point where you can't trust your memories of it, before finally getting it back again. Grace wanted to cry out for the fact that she got it back, and tightened her grip around Karen's waist so as not to let it go once again. She could feel Karen start to hesitate. No. What's going on? Why is it stopping? She just found it; it wasn't fair. Karen pulled away, and Grace whispered a desperate, breathless plea. "Don't stop. I'm okay, really," she threw in, just in case there was any uncertainty.

"Do you trust me?" Karen hoped the question would resonate for Grace the same way it resonated for her when Grace first asked it. She watched as a smirk played on the red heads face and the loose curls bobbed as she nodded. Karen brushed Grace's hair behind her ear and murmured into it. "If you're able to leave in the next five minutes, I'll have a cab waiting for us. If we're going to do this, we have to do this right." And with that, Karen left the bathroom, passing Will with an acknowledging nod that she was certain he didn't see before she walked out the door.

Grace had her back to the wall, taking deep breaths in a failing effort to calm herself. She needed to find an out. Something that didn't make Will suspicious. But something that didn't sound like too much of a lie. And she couldn't stay here much longer. Slowly, she made her way out of the bathroom towards the table. This was too much to lay on her tonight, and she had no idea how she was going to work her way out of this one. But she did know that she had to improvise, and she had to do it now.

"Are you okay? You were gone for a long time."

Perfect. She knew exactly what to do now. Leave it to Will to give her the easiest exit.

"Actually, I'm not feeling too well. I think I need to go home and rest. If you don't mind, I'll just hail a cab. I don't want you to have to leave early because of me."

Will looked at her for a moment, making Grace anxious. He found her out. He knew exactly what she was trying to do. He opened his mouth, and she expected the worst. "Okay. If you need anything, call me. Feel better." She still couldn't figure out if he was oblivious to the fact that she was following Karen, or if he knew and was giving her a pass. Either way, she was going to take it.

She walked out the restaurant door so as not to look like she was rushing towards destiny. Karen was waiting with the back cab door open for her. "Right on time," she said with a smile. Grace slid into the car with Karen close behind. When she ordered an address that Grace didn't know, it suddenly didn't matter where they went. Just as long as she was in Karen's presence.

It began again.


	7. Squeeze Box Days

"_Hey you,  
>Did you know you had me wrapped around your<br>Dirty little finger?  
>Hey, could you please draw me a picture?<br>And you might as well make me look like a man  
>I don't even care if you don't love me<br>And I don't even care if you don't want me  
>Can't we just spend tonight together<br>So I got something to think about tomorrow?"  
>~The Murmurs, "Squeeze Box Days"<em>

_February 1987_

"Are you going to tell him about me?"

Grace posed the question once they both had regained their breath, waited for their heartbeat to slow. When they slid in to the cab, leaving Will in their dust, Karen spit out the address of the first hotel that came to mind, paid for a room (Grace would have objected if it weren't for the whirlwind way in which Karen was doing all of this), and rushed the entrance of their room. In an instant, Grace was brought back to the bedroom of Dan's apartment—he never suspected a thing, and when she told him that she ended up not using his place, he bought it—and the way she felt, the touch that she was craving and had been searching for all this time. She had closed her eyes as Karen did exactly what she did last time, trying to take in her actions, maybe learn a thing or two. It seemed like a simple enough movement. But that simple movement contained everything, and Grace was worried that if she tried it, her movement would contain nothing.

But since Karen took control once again, she didn't have to think about it.

Now, Grace propped herself up on her elbow, felt these foreign sheets rustle from her shifting weight, slid her hand along Karen's stomach underneath the white covers, a bold move in itself for Grace. Her face hovering above, she watched Karen smile and felt her soft touch embrace her hand as those hazel eyes came to meet hers. At that moment, Grace realized that Karen could ask anything of her, and she would do as she was asked. It was the way she looked at her—so safe, yet you weren't so sure if you could trust her on the sole fact that you had no idea who this woman was. That look was intoxicating. And Grace couldn't get enough.

"Why would I tell him about you?" Karen's eyes shone in the blue-black night as she asked, in such a way that only her eyes were capable of. "That's not how these things usually work. The whole point was to act on something that he couldn't, not to brag about it afterwards."

"True. But if he realizes that you're going outside of the relationship for it, maybe that will light the fire under him that will finally get him to move. Maybe if you embellish it a bit, tell him that you're thinking of leaving him for me, he'd finally go through the motions to end it with his wife, for fear of losing you. I wouldn't be opposed to helping out with a little white lie to get to what you want."

Karen rolled over to her side to face Grace. "That only helps if I'm entirely sure that he's what I want. He's been pulling me around by the ear for so long that I'm not sure if I can take it anymore. Anyway, what do you mean, embellish? What makes you think that I wouldn't leave him for you? You made a pretty good case for yourself tonight," she said with a smirk.

"You're kidding, right? You don't even know me. I've seen you twice in my life, and there wasn't a lot of room for words either time. It wouldn't make any sense if you pulled him aside to tell him that you met me and realized you'd rather take a chance on me than continue on with him."

"You should really have more confidence in yourself. I don't think you're fully aware of your own strength." Karen hoped to make Grace smile at her comment, but when she saw that the deer in headlights look that became increasingly familiar wouldn't let up, she let out a small sigh. "All I know is that I've been more intimate with you in the two times we've met than I've been with him in the time that I've been with him. Maybe that's why I kept the others on the hook for so long; at least they would touch me whenever I wanted them to, I could touch them and they wouldn't wave me off."

"Did you love them at all?"

"In my own way."

A silence fell over them, almost as a remembrance for lovers past. Well. Maybe it was for Karen. For Grace, it was the realization that this woman had her wrapped around her finger, ready to jump when she was told how high to go. It didn't matter that they've only seen each other two times. It didn't matter if there was no love. Grace was hooked on the touch, the touch that only Karen could provide, and as long as she got it, the conditions that came along with it weren't important.

She loved that she could handle a connection that had absolutely no strings attached. But it frightened her that she actually had the capacity to do so.

"Maybe if I knew that we were going to see each other again, however distant in the future it may be, I'd be more willing to tell him about you."

Karen's remark made Grace smile, finally get out of the frozen look she had kept for the duration of their conversation, as she said softly, "I wouldn't mind it." Grace rested her head on the pillow. "Maybe if you told him that I was a man, it would affect him more."

"It wouldn't matter one way or another. He knows my history. It would affect him no matter what. Why are you so set on your insecurities?"

"Because I can't reciprocate what you do to me. I can't give you what you give me. There's no reason for you to continue with me if it's only a one-way street."

At that, Karen slid her weight on top of Grace's body, plunged her lips against the red head's and smiled in her mouth when she felt Grace relax against her body. She knew that if she started to run her hands up Grace's bare skin, she could make her shiver. Her fingers crawled up Grace's torso and silently rejoiced in Grace's reaction. She pulled away and watched Grace's eyes soften as they locked on hers.

"Just because you're not doing the same things to me that I am to you, that doesn't mean I'm not getting any pleasure out of it. It's a nice change of pace to be in control for once."

Karen started planting a trail of kisses on Grace's skin against the dark of the night, from her collarbone to her chest to her navel. Grace's eyes were set on Karen's hair travelling ever so slowly down her body. Suddenly, she was compelled to make a request. "Will you say my name?" she asked. "Just once, Karen." God, that sounded odd yet enticing. "It sounds so good coming from your lips."

She waited for a response, but in the silence only felt Karen's lips moving closer and closer to their final destination. Grace knew that she wasn't getting anywhere in her request, so in a desperate final attempt, she blurted out, "Will you spend the rest of the night with me?"

Karen lifted her head to lock her eyes with Grace's and smiled. "There's nowhere else I'd rather be tonight, Grace." There it was. It was so sweet, the way that syllable tumbled out of her mouth. Karen continued from where she stopped, getting Grace to respond in all the best ways.

In the morning, Grace found a slip of paper and a pen in her purse, and while Karen was still sleeping, wrote down her phone number, adding, _Perhaps now you can tell him_ at the bottom. She had no idea that Karen's eyes were open in tiny slits. She had no idea that Karen could see everything that Grace was doing. She had no idea that Karen figured out that she was trying to take on the role that Karen did the first time they met. She had no idea that Karen opened her eyes completely once her back was towards the bed.

She had no idea that as soon as she closed the door, Karen grabbed the phone on the nightstand and dialed.

* * *

><p>When Grace entered her apartment, it felt as though she had entered the real world once again, everything as it was when she left for her Valentine's date last night. It made her feel like she had dreamt up everything she had in her mind of how she spent her evening. Truth be told, it was like the last encounter she had with Karen; every scrap of evidence that she had come into Grace's life disappeared once the sun started to shine. She didn't know whether or not to be relieved because of this. It meant that she could go on living her life just as she normally did. But, if the last encounter was anything to go by, it also meant that until she found Karen again, she would be constantly craving the touch; it was a never ending cycle. She padded her way to the blinking red light on the answering machine, pressed play to hear a familiar voice fill the room.<p>

"Gracie, it's me." It started coming back to her at the sound of Will's greeting. The random encounter at the restaurant, the blatant lie to an oblivious friend simply trying to do something generous for the two of them. "You're probably asleep. Just wanted to see if you were feeling any better. Give me a call when you get this."

She couldn't detect any suspicion in his voice. Although, she was still a little shaky on his quirks—his coming out still left her unsure of her knowledge of this man—but as long as he didn't bring it up, she wasn't going to say anything. She let the next message play.

"I just wanted to see if this worked. You just left, and I wanted to see if I would really get your voice on the answering machine." Grace's heart skipped for a second as she heard Karen's voice. If anything brought her out of the real world and into the one she just left, it would be this. But this was mixing the fantasy world with reality. And she liked the way they meshed together. "And since it does work, I guess that means I'm going to have to call you again. As long as you'll pick up when you're home."

She would not be free of this woman, that much she knew for sure. She never got Karen's phone number in exchange for her own, effectively putting herself in a world of doubt and leaving her in a constant state of wonder.

But at that moment, Grace liked the idea.


	8. Jesus

"_Something in the way she just is  
>Makes me wonder who the hell I've been<br>And something in the way we are  
>Makes me wanna dive down into a brand new sin."<br>~BETTY, "Jesus" (Original Version)_

_May 1990_

It was three years of constant wanting, of constant waiting, of constant expectation and little reward. It was three years of constant frustration that eventually led to a payoff that was bigger than she could have possibly imagined. It was three years of an addiction she knew she wasn't going to be able to cure, and she wasn't sure she wanted to. It was three years of something she couldn't explain.

But Grace had to admit, she loved every minute of it, even if she had her suspicions about Karen's motives.

After she gave Karen her phone number—or, rather, after she left her phone number on a piece of paper for Karen to find when she woke up—it took the woman six months after the message left on her machine to pick up the phone and call Grace, successfully getting the red head on the other line. After that, months went by before the next time she heard Karen's voice, leaving her in a constant state of anxiety over the phone's ring reverberating through the apartment. It went on and on like this, never stopping, constantly leaving her in the dark, always telling her where to go, expecting her to drop whatever plans—if she had any—and rush to be by her side. And it wasn't like she had any qualms doing so. Even though it pissed off her boyfriends.

It usually took two last-minute cancellations to cause the guy in question to stop calling. Matt took one cancellation, surprisingly, some superiority complex that made him find it hard to accept that she had something more important to tend to. With Paul, though, it was different. When they met, Grace could tell in his eyes that he meant for this to be a long-term thing; because, when it gets right down to it, isn't that what you strive for when you ask someone out on a date? So when Grace had called to cancel one dinner, and then another, he didn't seem put off. He seemed to understand that there are some things you have to tend to that just can't wait, and while there was no way that Grace would ever tell him what those things were, she would certainly take advantage of his willingness to be so flexible. She used to feel guilty about it. But since Karen's calls happened so infrequently, it wasn't a matter of cheating on him, necessarily; it was just a matter of getting her fill of that touch, to tide her over until next time and to make her a happier girlfriend to the guy who wants her on his arm. She just wished that getting her fill didn't hinge so much on Karen's whim.

Grace was convinced that Karen called out of sheer boredom. That's the only reason she could come up with for the giant spaces between their encounters, the way that Karen started their conversations over the phone ("Grace? It's Karen. Do you remember me?" Of course she remembered her; there was no way to ever get rid of her footprints in her mind). But it didn't deter her, not in the slightest. As soon as she heard that unmistakable voice, she was taken back to their evenings in blue-black, and she could not resist. It worked, every time, even though she partly didn't want it to, and amidst the excitement, she always felt hesitant about it all.

Because now, she was lying on the couch, her legs stretched out and a sigh of boredom and longing on her lips, waiting for the phone to ring once again, like she had spent so much of her time in the past three years. And she felt that mixture of anticipation and dread. She jumped when the phone rang, almost as if she had willed it to sound, and stared at it sitting on the table, screaming for her to take action.

"Grace?"

"Paul, hi." Her heart slowly climbed from her throat to the place it belonged as she listened to his voice on the other end of the phone. And as she heard him ask her out tonight, she became a little saddened that it wasn't the voice that filled her desire. She agreed to meet him, got ready, and walked out the door.

She was outside of her building when her phone rang again.

* * *

><p>It was the fact that Grace didn't pick up that made her want to move. There was always a chance that she wouldn't be home, or she would be fast asleep, unaware of anything going on in the real world (and that was always a valid possibility; Karen had been known to call her late at night, when the loneliness struck hardest). And most of the time, the calls that led nowhere didn't faze her. But tonight…tonight was supposed to be the night. The night when she was finally ready to jump back in with her.<p>

And when it didn't pan out, she found that she just could not stay home.

Karen knew what Grace must be thinking about their arrangement. She knew that it was unfair. Karen was the one with the phone number, Karen was the one to call at erratic times, leaving a constant state of uncertainty. But it wasn't for the reasons that must be prevalent in her mind. And it was those made-up reasons that had to have been racing around in Grace's head that made Karen wish that she didn't have a conscience. That was what was screwing her on this.

She would meet Grace and be transported to another world, where nothing else mattered but the two of them, and Grace getting the things that made her agree to come back. But there was always the journey home after. There was always Stan's greeting, asking her where she ran off to in a way that wasn't suspicious, but genuinely inquisitive (and it made her regret ever agreeing to move in with him). And she scrambled to make a plausible excuse for her absence, never having the heart to tell him everything. And her confidence that she could handle being with two people at once was shot, shaking her and making her crawl back to the hole she had made her home.

It usually took her a few months before she stopped feeling guilty. But the day she couldn't feel it anymore, she dialed Grace's number, her fingers gracing the keys in a rush, and it would start all over again.

And tonight was supposed to be the night. Their last encounter was more than it had ever been before, and while she couldn't possibly gauge what Grace was feeling inside, Karen knew it rocked her more than it ever had. And it made her all the more aware of how deceiving she was to Stan. It sparked something that at once made her nervous and slightly frightened. She was usually able to come out of her encounters with Grace without a bleeding heart and a longing to immediately break all ties she had with Stan. But last time, she made the realization that she was only happy when she was sneaking around behind his back with this woman. And while it was a welcome if unexpected part of the plan, it through everything off balance.

It took her four months to make that phone call. Four months for her to finally come to terms with what she had been feeling. And Grace didn't pick up the phone. So when Stan wasn't paying attention, she slipped out of the house, hailed a cab, and travelled downtown, not sure of what she was looking for, and not particularly caring whether or not she would find it.

She got out of the cab on a tree-laced street in the West Village, reveled in the hushed hum of the city, the soft buzz from the avenue not enough to disrupt the peace. She wondered why she hadn't made her way down towards this part of Manhattan more often; free from the perils of streets of Midtown heavy with tourists, with an edge she couldn't get on the streets she called home. She walked down a random street, saw a couple hand in hand crossing to get to the coffee shop on the other side. The red hair was unmistakable. And in an instant, she realized why Grace didn't pick up the phone when she called.

Karen couldn't help herself. Her feet moving across the concrete of the sidewalk, feeling the magnetic pull towards the coffee shop, opened the door to it before she fully realized what she was doing. She couldn't find them anywhere; it was as if they had walked through the door to another dimension that she couldn't access. Maybe her mind was playing tricks on her. Maybe it was the withdrawal that made her start to see things. Maybe…

"Karen?" She heard the voice next to her and looked to find Grace seated by the entrance. The look in her eyes was far from what she was used to seeing. She saw concern and the fear of being caught red-handed. "What are you doing here?"

"I was just walking around and thought I saw you. I just wanted to see you. I called, but you never answered."

Grace sighed. "I was probably already out. If I would have known, I would have canceled with Paul. You know I wouldn't pass up a chance to see you." She glanced over at the line and saw that Paul was already giving their order to the cashier. "He's about to come back. I don't want him to find out about us."

"I've been unfair to you," Karen whispered, cutting to the chase. "Maybe this will even things out." She fumbled in her purse for a pen and scribbled her number on the back of an old receipt. "I'll answer as soon as you call." She slipped out of the coffee shop before Paul had a chance to notice Grace talking to someone he didn't know.

Paul set their drinks down on the table. And as Grace pocketed the receipt without any acknowledgment from him on her actions, she waited impatiently for a chance to get out.

* * *

><p>Grace waited until Paul got back in line to get a refill on his coffee, until his back was fully turned and his attention had shifted, to get out of her seat and rush out the door to the nearest payphone. She heard the metal clink of her change before dialing the number she had been given.<p>

"Hello?" If there was one thing Grace had to give her credit for, it was that Karen never lied.

"I want to make it up to you," she murmured, loud enough for her to hear. "Tell me where to go."


	9. Light You Up

"_And this old world can bring you down,  
>Turn your smile into a frown,<br>Break your heart and make you sad,  
>Drive you stark raving mad.<br>I just want to light you up,  
>Light you up like a fire<br>I just want to turn you on,  
>Turn you on and take you higher."<br>~Shawn Mullins, "Light You Up"_

_May 1990_

She still had the lease on this place until the end of the month. It was empty, save for the bed and a couple of overstuffed chairs that she hated and was happy to be getting rid of. A shell of an apartment, to match the shell of a relationship she was trying to build with a man that could not be broken, a man who held himself in such a way that she could not tell if he was truly in love with her, or if he just got sick of her nagging about his marriage until he finally gave in and called it off with his ex-wife. With each box she moved out of this apartment, she felt that one more piece of her was taken away, and the place in which she truly felt like she could be herself was ceasing to exist. It was out of her hands, and she hated it.

But at least she had control tonight.

As soon as Grace hung up the phone, Karen raced out of Stan's Park Avenue penthouse without an explanation—and to be quite honest, he wasn't paying attention to her anyway, so what was the point of sticking around?—and hailed a cab for her own apartment at the tip of Chelsea. It was her way of defiance, something to set her apart from the life Stan had expected her to live with him, and if she had it her way, she would be staying. But things never seemed to go as planned as soon as she sets her sights on them. She told Grace that she would leave the door unlocked so that she could walk right in. She told her to come by as quickly as she could. She made sure that she would be there by the time Grace walked in the door. And when she arrived before the red head did, she thought that, unlike all the other aspects she had encountered along her path, she could handle this, and she could get joy out of this. She made sure she had planned everything.

But she hadn't planned on the way Grace made her entrance.

When she pictured how it was going to go, after she slid into the back seat of the cab and held an absent gaze out of the window, there were no words between them. Karen would hear the sound of Grace walking into the apartment and answer her silent call, immediately coming together for the first time in months. They wouldn't speak until after the fact, if at all. She was basing this on the last few times that she had seen Grace; it was almost as if they fell into a routine that Karen didn't mind being a part of. There was no way, in her mind, that any of this would change anytime soon.

Now, Karen was sprawled out on the bed, cautious not to rustle the carefully made sheets (although, in a few minutes, would it really matter what the bed looked like?), when she heard the fumbling of the doorknob and the click of high heels on her newly bare hardwood floors—the rug she had thrown down the second day she moved in had been taken away a week ago. She stood up and straightened herself before walking out of the bedroom. It took all she had not to run out in a rush to take Grace in her arms and plunge her lips into her skin. She didn't want to seem too eager; it might lead Grace to believe that something deeper than what they appeared to have agreed upon was in her heart.

As she came into view, Karen could see Grace almost as she had been at the coffee shop—a short skirt that Karen had to admit made her mind wander, her curls tied back and hanging low. Except for the fact that the red head's face was now tear-stained.

"He found out," Grace said softly, shamefully, as Karen moved closer. As she spoke, she found herself pacing, unable to stay in one place, slowly making her way towards the kitchen. "He walked out of the coffee shop and saw me at the payphone."

"Grace, that doesn't mean that he knows." Karen wasn't expecting to have to talk her down. But as soon as she saw the look on Grace's face, she knew she would stop at nothing to put an ease back to her eyes. Out of the heat of this moment, she would begin to wonder what this meant for her feelings towards Grace. But right now, she couldn't care less.

"No, you don't understand. You didn't let me finish." Grace saw how her stern remark took Karen aback, and tried to make it better. "I'm sorry, that's not how I meant it."

"It's okay. Just tell me what happened."

"He walked out of the coffee shop and found me at the payphone, but he didn't say anything until I turned around. God, he had a smile on his face that had so much childish hope in it, like everything was going to be fine and we could go back into the coffeehouse like nothing important happened. He asked me if everything was okay. And I know he was just looking for assurance, just a stock 'yes' so we could go back inside." Grace's voice started to crack, the tears started to well up in her eyes once again. "But I'm the worst liar, Karen, I really am. If I'm not confronted, I'm fine. But…"

"Grace, take a breath. Calm down." It took all Karen had not to cradle her in her arms. But she was worried about how her action might be taken, especially since it seemed as though she was the cause of the issue that had Grace so shaken.

"He saw the look in my eyes and he knew that my 'yes' wasn't genuine, and he asked who was on the other end of the phone line. And I couldn't help it, everything just came out. And he just walked away. It's over."

"Grace, I'm so sorry."

She could see the tears streaming down Grace's face now. "It's not even that I thought he was the one! That's the worst part of it. I'm crying myself sick over some guy that was just hanging around, even though I gave him good reason to leave long before now."

"What is it?"

"I can't take being alone for that long! You come in, and you make me feel so good, and it's the most brilliant thing. But when you leave, I don't see you for months, and I can't take not having that feeling. And he didn't give me that feeling, but he took my mind off of it. I know that sounds horrible, but I don't know what else to do, Karen! I haven't even seen you in four months."

Karen lifted Grace to sit on the island in the kitchen, the smooth marble surface chilly on Grace's thigh. "Look at me," she whispered to the red head, as she graced her hand along her saline-laced cheek. "No one else matters right now. It's just you and me." It was the first time she said anything like that to Grace, the first time she acted in such a way, so close to how she would react in a legitimate relationship, that she froze, waiting for Grace's reaction. This wasn't how they were supposed to conduct themselves. "You have my phone number now. You don't have to wait for me." Grace nodded in Karen's hands, took a few breaths to calm down again.

And then she went in for the kill.

Karen could feel Grace's legs wrap around her waist as their lips brushed against each other. The salt on Grace's lips from her tears brought a taste to it all that Karen had to get used to. She felt Grace's kisses travel down her neck as she whispered to her.

"Let me make this better."

With Grace's legs wrapped tightly around her body, Karen carried her to the bedroom. She couldn't tell if it was her own strength or sheer adrenaline from the moment that gave Grace a completely weightless feel. The way that Grace wrapped her arms around Karen's neck made her want to stop for a moment, just to take it in. So much trust in that hold. It almost didn't make sense to her; it was true that she knew everything there was to know about Grace on a purely physical level. She knew what to do, and what not to do; where to go, and where to absolutely avoid at all costs. But in all other aspects, they were total strangers. In the five years that they had done this, it never hit her how peculiar their situation was. Seeing Grace at the doorway tonight put things into perspective.

Although, now was not the time to dwell on that. She had to move, and she had to do it now.

They collapsed on the mattress, and immediately found each other's lips as Karen slipped Grace's skirt off of her legs and onto the floor. If she was in complete distress before, it was clear that the fire in Grace's eyes was about to light up. And that was all Karen wanted to achieve. A kiss on her breastbone picked up the match. A kiss on her navel lit it. A touch along her inner thighs waved the orange glow around, and once Karen reached what Grace craved, the flame caught, and burned wildly.

Karen did everything she was expected to do, she could see the satisfaction in Grace's eyes, she could feel everything against her skin. But as they came to rest on the bed, she couldn't help but see the image of a broken Grace with tears in her eyes and accusations for the both of them. They were robbing each other of the fulfilling relationship that this could be, and they were both well aware of it. She felt Grace nestle against her skin, not saying a word, and she wondered if it was considered robbery if neither of them expressed a desire to be exclusive, to have this turn into anything other than the occasional hookup. Grace continued to see other men. Karen still had not freed herself from her relationship with Stan, although she had come close several times. She never thought about ending it for Grace.

Then again, she didn't realize until now that a part of her actually wanted it. And she felt as though Grace had to have wanted it, too. She wouldn't have cried over Paul that hard if she didn't. Right? Karen looked down at Grace; her eyes were slowly starting to close in sleep, but Karen couldn't help herself. "Grace?" she whispered.

"Hmm…" she heard Grace hum in acknowledgement.

There was too much to say. Too much to fit into a near-slumber conversation that most likely wouldn't be remembered in the morning. Karen sighed and said all she could bring herself to say at that moment.

"I'm sorry."

She always wanted to light Grace up.

It wasn't until that night that she realized there was more than one way to do so.


	10. She's Got To Be

"_She's got to be with me always  
>To make sense of the skin I'm in<br>Sometimes it gets dangerous, yeah,  
>And lonely to defend<br>Marking time with every change  
>It's hard to love this woman in me"<br>~Amy Ray, "She's Got To Be"_

_January 1991_

Ever since that night, the tears that probably didn't need to be shed and the lengthy and dramatic speech that probably didn't need to be said, Grace could see something different living in Karen's look when she tried to see into her eyes. It started as a little speck, a smudge along the picture she normally got every time those hazel eyes opened up to her, usually showing a wild flame she couldn't help but want to be engulfed in. The flame was still there, but obscured, slightly hidden. And as time went on, the uncontrollable orange and yellow glow was completely covered up by something that resembled concerned, at least what she thought to be concern. It blocked the flame from all sides, and even though it might still be there, Grace had a hard time of believing what she couldn't see.

It was why she avoided dialing Karen's number for the first three weeks after the episode in the near-empty apartment. Grace was too embarrassed from the way she made her entrance to be fully confident in her interactions with Karen. And as if she had the ability to read minds that were a cab ride away, Karen didn't call at all during Grace's self-inflicted respite. But the only thing it made Grace realize was what she already knew; going long stretches of time without the touch was torture.

She picked up the phone when she couldn't take it anymore, got Karen on the second ring, and they picked up right where they left off.

The first time she looked into Karen's eyes, she saw the semi-blocked glow and played it off as a one-time occurrence; it never happened before, so why should she expect it to happen again? She called more frequently when Karen didn't, taking her up on her comment of not waiting around. But even though they saw each other more often, and she thought that the fire would shine bright, the opposite happened. She kept a close eye on Karen, but watched as the light she loved so much turn to black.

When she called Karen today, she made it clear that she wasn't looking for a hookup. She made it clear that she wanted to meet for a cup of coffee, to just talk. Karen's voice sounded wary as she agreed to meet her at the same coffeehouse that housed the memory of the demise of Grace's relationship with Paul, an odd choice, but Karen wouldn't express her skepticism over the matter. Grace hung up the phone and put on her coat, stepped outside to brave the early January snow.

Her apartment was only a few short blocks from the place, but the snow made the walk unbearable. Winter in New York was always a brutal thing, and every year, Grace thought that she would be able to adapt. But as the years went by, she found herself complaining about every little thing. She walked through the door and after mumbling under her breath about the unexpected slush puddle she stepped in that looked shallower than it was, took a look around. Karen was nowhere to be seen, just as she had intended. She wanted time to think, to gather her thoughts and prepare herself for…well, she wasn't quite sure what yet. But as she ordered some coffee and took a seat by the window, nursing her cup in an action absent of any outward emotion.

She was afraid of losing Karen. That's what it came down to. But she wasn't exactly sure why. It was purely carnal, save for the dark night of tears, and she was the one to blame for that. And when it got right down to it, the woman who touches her in ways she couldn't explain was a total stranger. Plus, she had studied Karen's actions, she paid attention to where her hands travelled at night, and was growing more and more confident that she could do the fundamentals herself. If she had to, Grace could do without her (although memories of the time after their very first encounter begged to differ). So she couldn't explain why the darkness in Karen's eyes frightened her so much.

You spend enough time with someone and you just get attached, no matter how much you know about her.

Grace felt a rush of cold from the doorway and saw Karen, snowflakes scattered in her hair, coming to die a melted death on the wool of her coat. She watched as Karen gave her a soft smile and came to sit down across the table from her, draping her coat along the back of the chair. "Aren't you going to order something."

"Maybe later," Karen replied. "I want to see how this conversation goes first." She winced as soon as she said that, hating the way it sounded—like she was expecting the worst and wanted to get out of there as soon as she possibly could. "I'm sorry, that's not how I meant it. I just…well, you sounded like you had something weighing on your mind, and not in the way I'm used to." She let a little smirk play on her lips, but as soon as she looked into Grace's eyes, she realized that there was no room for playfulness here. She let it fall and asked, "What's the matter?"

"Did I do something you didn't like?" The question floated in the air, neither one of them wanting to claim it, but watching to see if it would fall. And when it stayed strong in midair, Karen realized she had to do something about it. Even though she had a bad feeling about it.

"No, of course not. What would make you say that?"

"Something's off. You can't tell me that you don't notice a change. It took me a while to figure it out myself. But the last couple of months...it was just too big to ignore. Something's different about your spirit. And I don't know if it's me, or if it's the situation, but I don't want it to go on like this anymore. If you're just going through the motions, I wish you'd tell me. Maybe we can fix it."

"But how can you tell that you're going through the motions if it's only sex?" Karen didn't say this in a snarky way; it was a genuine question for which she wasn't sure she had an answer. They never talked about the emotional aspects of what they were doing. They never talked about the possibility of falling. She always had the feeling that they were under the mentality that if you didn't speak about it, it didn't exist. And it obviously wasn't working. "I don't want you to think that I'm not interested."

"Then what is it, Karen? I already apologized about that night after my breakup with Paul as soon as we saw each other again. It's been eight months, I don't know what else I can do. Tell me what I'm doing wrong so I can make it better. Tell me what I can do to make this strong again."

There it was. The transition she needed but hoped would never come. Karen took a deep breath and braced herself for what was to come. "It's not you. I told you that you didn't have to apologize for that. It's…you scared me that night, Grace. You were talking about loneliness and using your relationships with men as distractions, and that was never part of the plan. And you brought out a side of me that night that I assume was always there, but never expected to come out. And then I started to look at things differently, but you didn't seem to be on the same page. I can never read you, and that's normally fine, but after that night…I just don't know what to think. We both know that we didn't go into this for anything other than sex."

"But what if…"Grace found that she couldn't finish her statement. "Never mind." What Karen had said was crude, but true. And for a moment, she thought that maybe Karen was thinking the same thing; maybe they could take this to another level. Maybe if they got to know each other a little better, it would give them more reason to cut off all other romantic ties, and wrap the ribbon around the two of them. It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

In fact, if Karen had posed it, Grace would have agreed. Because when it came down to it, she had to be with Karen to truly feel alive, to make sense of this life. And she could only hope that Karen felt the same way, that the blocked flame was only protection.

They let a silence pass that was the thickest either of them had ever experienced. Grace saw Karen taking a breath, opening her mouth, and for a fleeting moment, she hoped that Karen could once again read her mind, put her out of her misery, and say the things that she couldn't.

"Maybe we should take some time to just…to just cool off a bit. Not see each other for a while, get everything straightened out and see where we are a little further down the road."

It came like a slap across Grace's face. She had tried everything in her power to save them from this outcome, to defend what they had, short of simply blurting it out in a desperate attempt to change reality. "Is that really what you want?" she asked.

"I think it's what we need. I'm trying to look out for the both of us." Karen looked at her, locked eyes, saw the shock and…was that pain? "Please…don't look at me like that. I can't take it."

"You should have thought of that before you put that option out on the table. That wasn't at all what I was angling towards. That was the last thing I wanted to get out of this today. I'm trying to save whatever the hell you want to call this—and at this point, I'm not even sure what name to put on this—and you want to give up?"

"I'm not giving up. I'm just taking a break. I don't know what else to do."

She couldn't be here. She couldn't face this. If she stayed here any longer, the tears at the back of her throat would work their way out, and she knew how that goes over. She stood up and threw on her coat. "Call me when you realize that you made a mistake." It was harsh, it was sloppy, but Grace needed to spit out something that felt even the slightest bit bitter to counteract Karen. She rushed out the door and onto the snow-laden streets.

She didn't let the tears flow until she was a block away, until she knew she was out of Karen's sight.


	11. Essence

"_Baby, sweet baby, you're my drug  
>Come on and let me taste your stuff<br>Baby, sweet baby, bring me your gift  
>What surprise are you gonna hit me with?<br>I am waiting here for more, I am waiting by your door  
>I am waiting on your back steps<br>I am waiting in my car, I am waiting at this bar  
>I am waiting for your essence."<br>~Lucinda Williams, "Essence"_

_August 1992_

The bar they almost went into, outside of which they first met. The bar where they had their first drink together. The neighborhood that first apartment stood. The restaurant from that fated Valentine's Day. The neighborhood their Valentine's Night hotel stood. That damn coffeehouse. Her old street in Chelsea. They were all permanently engraved in her mind. And all this time, she frequented them constantly, going in a circle from earliest to most recent, hoping for a glimpse, hoping for a conversation. Hoping for a second chance (was it even deserved at this point?). The circle was dizzying. The circle was tiresome.

But in her heart, the circle was necessary.

That was, until she decided that she had put herself through enough loneliness, enough misery, enough disappointment, and she couldn't take it anymore. She picked up the phone and dialed the numbers she thought she forgot. Turned out, they were engraved in her mind as well. She heard the familiar ring, took a deep breath.

She hoped with everything she could muster up inside, to whoever had the good grace to listen to her plea, that she wouldn't get the answering machine.

* * *

><p>Really, when it came down to it, there was no point in dwelling on it.<p>

When she first walked out of that coffeehouse, Grace couldn't help but wait endlessly for the phone to ring. She thought that Karen was just talking nonsense, that she would realize it and dial her number, apologizing profusely for the tears she had caused and the heartache that didn't need to be felt. But then a few weeks went by, and then a month, and it became clear that Karen meant every word that she said. And it became clear that if there was a time to mourn the loss, and if there was a time to realize that if she had only said the words she had hoped would come from Karen's lips none of this would be happening, it was now. Grace had no idea where to find her, no way of ever finding out how Karen was handling things. It killed her.

But that didn't mean she wasn't waiting.

After a few months, Grace was finally able to put it out of her mind, slowly but surely continue on with her life, and find someone she could pay full attention to without the possibility of the phone ringing. And she really thought she could make it work with Mitchell. A client looking for her to decorate his studio apartment, she took every opportunity during the job to get to know him, desperately looking forward to the day the project was finished, and she would be free to go on a date with him—she would have felt guilty letting personal matters get in the way of her professional reputation. They found the things they had in common and made up for the things they didn't with a passionate kiss or a look that dove deep into the other's eyes. It was proof that life compensated for the things that short-changed you.

Then it became August. What a cruel month it turned out to be. Grace looked at the calendar on her desk one day, by chance, in a quick glance that would seal her fate. It was just one look. One look that everybody else could make with ease, going back to their lives without batting an eye. But Grace could never be like everybody else. Grace looked at the calendar, and saw lost time. Grace looked at the calendar, and saw over a year and a half without Karen. God…how could it have been that long ago? How could she have gone that long without that touch, without the flame against the blue-black night? It was then that she realized how much she still missed it, how much she missed her. And in an instant, she had gone back to the mindset she was in as she left the coffeehouse with tears in her eyes and snow falling mercilessly from the sky.

And, much to her dismay, Mitchell noticed.

He thought of it as a slight rough patch—it was going to come eventually, like it does in virtually every other relationship—and did his best to be accommodating, did his best not to cross her. But soon enough, it became too big of an issue to skate around. If she had known about his thought process throughout the month, she might have seen that it was similar to what she had gone through with Karen. She might have seen that he was really trying to look out for her. She might have seen this coming.

Mitchell rang the doorbell to Grace's Village apartment unexpectedly early. When she opened the door, she immediately recognized the look on his face; it was the same look that Karen had when they last met at the coffeehouse. She hoped her eyes were playing tricks on her; they had to be. It was only because Karen had forced her way back into the forefront of Grace's mind, that was all. Shake it off, put on a smile. Act like you didn't see anything. "I wasn't expecting you for another hour," she said as she leaned in to kiss his cheek.

"I was going to call," he said as he walked into the apartment, "but I realized that would have been too much of a cop out. You don't deserve that."

Oh god.

"You're not happy, Grace. Not anymore. It's so hard to see you act this way, when everything had been going so well the entire time. I don't know if it's something that I did, or if you just don't see the spark anymore, but I don't think I can fix it, and believe me, I've tried."

Grace looked him in the eye. "Why didn't you tell me this before? Why didn't you try to talk to me about it?"

"At first I thought it was something you would get over, and if it had to do with me, you would tell me. But you wouldn't come out of it, and…it's almost been a month, and I have no idea how to handle it. I've been thinking a lot about this, and I think the best thing for us to do would be to end it, if you're this miserable."

How many relationships would her time with Karen ruin? It wasn't even the presence anymore, it was only the memory; yet the memory seemed to have an even more powerful effect on her public life than the actual action had been. She couldn't speak, simply nodded at his decision and watched as he turned to leave. She was truly saddened to see him go; this was the guy who seemed to want to stick around. This was the guy who took her mind off of the demise of her biggest secret, to the point where she didn't miss it. This was the guy who tried to stick it out even when he didn't know what was going on. If she couldn't make it work with him, there was little hope for the future.

Mitchell stopped in the doorway and turned to face her one last time. "Can I ask you something? Please be honest." He let the smallest amount of silence go by, not nearly enough for Grace to answer one way or another, before speaking again. "I didn't think that this was where your mind has been, but I can't help but ask. Is it someone else?"

Grace looked at him, saw how much he truly cared about her, and found that she couldn't possibly lie to him. "In a way," she said, and he hung down his head, closing the front door behind him. She could tell him that it was hard to explain—she could barely explain it to herself, so how could she explain it to someone on the outside?—but to bog down the situation with more words would only make it rougher. So she let him go.

It was useless to cry over it. In the end, isn't this what she wanted? (Only if she had Karen to fall back to, but that was so far from a plausible possibility.)

She walked into her bedroom, saw the outfit she had laid out for her date with Mitchell—they were supposed to go out for drinks and dancing—and let out a sigh at the waste of the deep red silk dress resting lifelessly on her mattress before throwing herself on the bed next to it. When Grace was slowly starting to get over the hump, when she was slowly beginning to put those memories in a box in the back of her mind, she thought about how this cycle could begin again. She had just hoped that she would have the good sense to break it in time.

Turns out, she never had that good sense.

She heard the phone ring and dreaded answering it. Probably Will calling to kill time, and she was in no mood to kill time that way. Grace knew what would happen; he would hear the different tone in her voice, he would ask her what was wrong and wouldn't quit until he got the truth. She would tell him about Mitchell. She would probably slip and tell him about Karen, because, really, there was no other way to describe the cause of the demise of her relationship. Slowly, she stood up and made her way to the living room, so she would be able to hear the answering machine, waiting for the familiar voice of her best friend.

"Grace…I don't…I don't even know if this is still your number…"

"Oh my god," she whispered, and rushed to the phone. "It is. I'm still here," she said into the receiver, breathless. This couldn't be happening right now. Too much time had passed for it to be happening. Still, she played into it, spoke like it was real. "I can't believe it's you. It's been…"

"I know. Believe me, I know. I'm still a little in shock that I actually got you on the other end of the phone instead of some other random person." Grace could hear a small laugh, and guessed that it had to be the result of nerves. There was nothing funny about this. "I'm just going out on a limb, here. There's a good chance that you don't want to talk to me." A pause. "Do you want to talk to me?"

Grace felt a small smile play on her lips. "I wouldn't mind it," she murmured. "Especially after the night I've had."

"Do you have plans tonight?"

She thought about Mitchell, about the red dress on her mattress and sighed. "Not anymore."

"Will you meet me somewhere?"

Grace felt that familiar leap in her heart. "Karen," she said, "I will go wherever you want to go."


	12. I Confess

"_I confess, I need you badly  
>Hold me in your arms, love me madly<br>I confess, I'll be your daddy  
>Ask for anything, I'll do it gladly<br>Life without you only brought me heartache  
>I've had all the lonely I can take<br>Now I know the letting go was my mistake  
>I'll say it again and again and again…"<br>~k.d. lang & The Siss Boom Bang, "I Confess"_

_August 1992_

It wasn't a waste of a silk red dress, after all.

As soon as Grace heard Karen ask her to meet at the bar they went to when they first met, she knew she was going to make up for her unpreparedness the first time around. She slipped the dress on, smiled at the feel of the silk against her bare skin and the fact that she would have a chance to bring the dress to life in unexpected circumstances, and teased her hair. One look in the mirror made her wonder what her intentions were. Sure, she actually wanted to look presentable in a place where jeans and an old sweater made her blush. But she would be lying if she wasn't trying to perfect her look for Karen. Whether it was because she wanted to look her best, or because she was hoping to make Karen regret the time they lost, she couldn't be sure.

The cab ride was silent and solemn; she couldn't figure out the head space she was in. Excitement, confusion, sadness, anger, and helplessness all wrapped into one tightly wound package. And she couldn't possibly unwrap it, because the only person who knew about it was the person who gave it to her in the first place. It wasn't like she could put the package into a singular category, either; she loved and hated it in equal measure.

Karen was slowly making her way back into Grace's world. But what was the cost?

Just when it seemed like she couldn't take this confined space anymore, the cab slowed to a stop in front of the building, and in a flash, she was brought back to 1985, to the dried tears on her cheeks and a curiously generous stranger buying her martinis and letting her spill more about her life than she ever would have onto any other unfamiliar person. She was brought back to the touch above her knee, her audacity to bring her back to a friend's apartment—a friend she hadn't seen in years, and an apartment she never saw after that night—and the thought that it would only be a one-time occurrence. She was brought back to one simple decision that caused the chaotic wind in her life that no one else knew about. And whether she was ready for it or not, she was about to feel that wind again. With a deep breath, she got out of the cab, and opened the door to the bar.

The interior hadn't changed since the last time she was there, although she certainly had. If anyone sitting with a drink in their hand was there the night she met Karen, they obviously didn't remember her as the mess of a girl that walked into the upper-class establishment almost seven years ago (come on, Grace. It might have been a big moment for you, but everyone else around you? They couldn't care less to remember any of it). A second chance at a first impression, to everyone except the one who truly mattered. She looked around at the place, the suits and the skirts, the pumps and the ties, searching for that familiar face in no particular rush. As much as she wanted to see Karen, she didn't know the first thing to say to her, and needed more time. So much more time. Time that she was obviously never going to get.

Because as soon as she looked towards the bar, she saw the back of the dark haired woman, a martini at the empty seat next to her, and she knew that the drink was meant for her.

Grace walked over to the empty seat, saw Karen staring into her glass as she sat down. "You know, I started drinking these because of you," she said. She could feel Karen's eyes suddenly on her, but she didn't have the strength to return the favor right away. "You brought me here that night, and I tried to make up for the fact that I was severely underdressed by ordering something that looked a little more classy than the cheap beer I was used to drinking." She took a sip before finally glancing over at Karen. She let out a little nervous laugh and watched as Karen's brow furrowed in confusion.

"What?" Karen asked, playing friendly, but her voice let Grace know that she was the same package of emotions—excitement, helplessness, and all—and that somehow put her at ease, knowing this wasn't a piece of cake for Karen, either, that it was work to come here, to be next to each other without the same reference points they once could claim as their own.

"Nothing, it's nothing. It's just me." Grace took a moment to study the woman in front of her, trying to pick up anything she might have missed over the past year and a half. "I don't know why I thought I'd walk in and find that you changed so dramatically. You look the same as you did the last time."

Karen smiled. "How long ago did you think was the last time we saw each other?" Grace looked on as she put her lips to her glass, and remembered how she used to kiss those lips with such tenderness, partly because she didn't know how to act around such a confident and controlled woman like Karen, partly because that had always been the way she kissed (ask Will, ask Paul, ask Mitchell). She would give anything to kiss those lips right now, but time had separated them long enough to rule that out, at least for now.

"I know how long it's been. It felt longer, though." They let a small silence float by as they tried to collect their thoughts. How could it be this hard? They had no trouble talking in the past, they had no trouble being in each other's presence before. But now, with the time that had gone by, they became perfect strangers once again. And Grace didn't know about Karen, but it was certainly killing her inside knowing that it had come to this. She had to say something, anything, to make this go away, to make the situation seem lighter and less oppressive than it had been. "Are you still with him? That guy?" Such a ridiculous question, but she was curious about it ever since that fated look at the calendar, and she couldn't help but ask.

"Stan? Yeah, we're still together. I can't tell you why, though. I barely know myself. I guess I stick around so I don't feel lonely. But being in a relationship with someone who spends less and less time talking to you is the loneliest feeling of all. It gets hard to handle." She looked at Grace's fingers sliding along the rim of her glass before her eyes traveled up to meet the pair staring at her. "What about you?" she asked. "Did you find someone? Did I interrupt something by calling you out tonight?"

"No. I checked out of my relationship weeks ago. He left me tonight. I just…I don't know, I looked at the calendar one day, and it registered with me that I hadn't seen you in nineteen months. And that made me so sad, Karen." It felt weird, after so long, to hear that name slip out of her lips, but so intoxicating, like it always had been. "It made me sad that you hadn't called, that you hadn't talked to me. It made me sad that I didn't take any action, because it's not like I had no way of reaching you." She took a deep breath, knowing she was about to go out on a limb, but taking the initiative anyway. "I miss you." And then, desperately, "Do you miss me?"

"I wouldn't have called you if I didn't." Karen looked down at her glass, for some reason not wanting to see Grace's reaction. But she could feel her smile. And she thought about just putting it all out on the table, not wasting any more of their time. She thought about the silence that kept coming back to them, and how it wasn't going to get any better if they just continued with small talk. She thought about how much she would regret it if she let the time roll by and Grace left, and she would have to wait to say what she had been wanting to for over a year and a half. She took a deep breath.

"I'm just going to get right to it." She still couldn't look Grace in the eye; she thought it would be easier to say everything that way. "I haven't been able to get you out of my mind since you left the coffeehouse that day. And I know it was my fault. But I was grappling with things that I understood but couldn't necessarily handle, especially given the way we were spending our time together. I don't know what else to do but this, Grace. Something has got to change. I can't be happy if I'm not with you. That's what it comes down to. And it seems like it's the same for you, although I could be wrong."

"No, you're not wrong. So what do you want to do about it?"

"I want to be with you, Grace. That's it. I can work my way around Stan; I've checked out of that relationship long ago. I don't know what keeps me with him, but there's something there. Until I figure it out, I've got enough space from him whether I want it or not. I want to make up for the time we lost. I want to make up for the way I acted towards the end. I realized that what I felt for you was deeper than I ever thought it would be, and it completely changed the way I saw our nights together. That's why I wanted to take that break; if I wasn't hurting you, I was certainly going to hurt myself if we kept going without speaking about this."

Finally, Karen looked at Grace. If she was feeling anything by what was just said, Karen couldn't tell. It was a poker face that she didn't know Grace possessed. Without saying a word, Grace stood up and slowly made her way out of the building. Slowly enough to reassure her actions, slowly enough to hear Karen's heels behind her, getting ready to follow the red head out the door.

When Grace walked outside, the late-August night was starting to cool off from the rain that decided to fall. Her skin was wet, the look she had so meticulously perfected washing away in mere seconds, and she couldn't care less. She turned to face the door, watched as Karen quickened her pace to get outside. The look on her face betrayed the confidence Grace knew dwelled in her being. "Grace, what are you doing?" Karen asked breathlessly.

Grace let a smirk play on her lips as she pushed Karen against the outside of the building, pressing her lips against the ones she had longed for all this time, tasting the rain along with the sweetness she so deeply missed. She felt Karen's arms wrap around her waist and pull her in closer. Just like that, failed relationships and ridiculous tears were completely erased by Karen's skin, her lips, the look in her eyes as they pulled away.

"I didn't want everyone inside to be in on a moment that was just ours," Grace said. "I've been waiting for this for so long." She brushed Karen's matted hair out of her face. "Take me somewhere. Take me somewhere private."

Karen grabbed Grace's hand and hailed a cab. Grace's wish was her command.


	13. Everything  Everywhere

"_Oh, your face when you laugh  
>All my worries fade<br>You can grab me by my jeans,  
>Pull, and take what you want of me<br>I'm not going anywhere but here."  
>~The Butchies, "Everything + Everywhere"<em>

_October 1992_

She had to admit, the red rose was a nice touch, something that had started recently, over the last couple of outings together. It never ceased to make her smile. Karen told her the first time—as they embarked upon a walk in Central Park in the early evening—that she wanted to create a gesture that was only theirs. Something fresh, something that no one had ever done for Grace. The first was a rose from a florist that Karen swore by; but as the days moved on, it slowly didn't begin to matter where she got the single flower. A florist, the market on the corner of the street; as long as it was one red rose, it would do.

Grace held her newly acquired rose by the middle of the stem on their way down Fifth Avenue. They had found a market somewhere along Sixteenth Street with fresh flowers outside on their way to Washington Square, and Karen pulled the two of them to the side while Grace watched the transaction with a smile on her face. "You know you don't have to do this every time I see you," she murmured into Karen's ear before kissing her cheek as they walked downtown. A few blocks south, and her eyes lit up as the arch of Washington Square was coming into view.

"I'm just making up for the times when I wasn't able to do this for you," Karen replied with a smile. She felt Grace rest her head on her shoulders and they walked in a peaceful silence to Washington Square Park.

The early October afternoon was still warm enough to roam the park without a chill trying to force you back into your home. Since their venture to Central Park, Grace realized how much she loved the way Karen lit up the sparse nature that Manhattan had to offer. And when they were getting ready to leave the coffeehouse they found in Union Square, she made the suggestion of Washington Square, not only because of how close it was to her apartment, but because she always had the greatest memories of serenity there, the sunlight shining down as the fountain burst to life in the summer and the buskers coming to play no matter how cold it is. Standing underneath the arch, Karen let out a contented sigh.

"I used to come here all the time as a teenager, just because it pissed off my mother," she said with a smirk in her voice. "At least until I was sixteen."

Grace looked at Karen's profile. "I didn't know you grew up here."

Karen shook her head. "We lived in Brooklyn. And when my dad died when I was seven, my mom really tried to give her kids a good life in spite of the unexpected curve ball that was thrown at us. But then a time came where it seemed like she was in it more for herself than she was for my sister and me. Back then, this place was a little sketchier than it is now, and one of the first things my mother told us was to never wander into the park, that it wasn't safe for us and never would be. So when I decided to act on my own form of rebellion, I would hop a train into Manhattan, walk to the arch to see what would happen."

"Did anything happen to you?"

"No. I mainly thought that she was full of it. But there were times when I stood by the fountain just waiting for it, thinking that maybe that would be enough to get her to see that she wasn't doing her family any good on the path she was making us walk. As if I had resorted to this to make her see how wrong she was, and it would get her to change her ways." She took a look at Grace, fully attentive Grace, giving undivided attention to her every word. "I didn't mean to bring it down so quickly," she said, immediately trying to apologize, wipe away everything she just said. "I only meant for it to be a quick comment. I don't normally go into too much detail when it comes to my childhood." She thought for a moment. "God, I don't even think I told Stan about that."

It was true. For all Stan Walker knew, she could have been anyone and anything before she met him. And he didn't seem to mind that he knew next to nothing about her life prior to their relationship; in fact, he didn't seem to care all that much. Not to say that he didn't care for her—no, there were certain occasions where she was certain that there was love for her in his being. But those occasions had been few and far between lately, and she sometimes wondered why she stayed with him at all, especially when she was holding Grace's hand. There was no ring on her finger, and there was no sign of Stan proposing to her anytime soon (if he tried to now, she was positive that a "no" would fly out of her mouth faster than she ever thought possible). But because she had been with him for so long, it was almost as if she would be saying goodbye to a big chunk of her life if she ever decided to walk away. It was a problem she chose to let her future self handle.

But that meant the possibility of facing this problem forever. And she hated the thought of that.

Karen, what are you doing? Don't think of that now. Get back in the moment.

"You don't have to apologize for that," Grace said softly. But the look in her eyes told Karen she wanted to know more. "You said that you did that until you were sixteen. What happened then?"

"I ran away, took what I thought was enough money to live on for a decent amount of time, packed what I absolutely needed, and left. I know that sounds really clichéd, but it seemed necessary at the time. Hell, it still seems necessary, and I can't say that I regret doing it. I stayed with a friend on the Upper West Side for a couple of nights until I figured out what I wanted to do. Then I left New York, looking for any city that would feel like home to me. I've lived in Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago. I went to the West Coast for a few months and lived in San Francisco. I even did a stint in Santa Fe. I always got tired of wherever I was living within a year. It always kept coming back to New York. So I gave in."

"Maybe that was just your subconscious telling you to come back, because if you did, you'd eventually meet me."

It was meant as a joke, and even as Grace said it, Karen could hear the playful tone in her voice. But something inside her couldn't help but think of it as the truth. Maybe it was fate pulling her towards Manhattan every time she thought about the next city to try, the next place she should call home. She wanted more than anything to believe that Grace was the reason she came back. "That must be it," she said, playing it off just as Grace had, and she felt Grace link her arm around hers as she burrowed closer to Karen. "What about you? Tell me something about your childhood."

"Oh, there's nothing interesting there. Typical middle child stuff that even bores me. There's plenty of time to get into that later. But I'm glad that I got to know you a little better today." It was still odd to them, dropping little bits of information about themselves into their everyday conversation. After years of not knowing anything about the woman they were secretly meeting, learning about where they came from felt exotic and almost forbidden, until they realized how everything changed. "I wish I had something exciting to tell you," Grace said. "But truthfully, you already know the most exciting bits of my life. You were a part of them."

Grace thought it sounded incredibly corny coming out of her mouth. She winced and waited for a response, hoping that she hadn't just ruined their day together. She felt Karen's body jolt, and heard a small laugh next to her. "I'm serious!" Grace said to defend herself, although she was starting to laugh at her statement, too. "I never did anything like that until I met you."

"I can't say I'm completely innocent," Karen said, "but whatever I will admit to, it didn't mean nearly as much as you did." They had been walking the west path of the park until they stopped in front of the fountain. It was no longer in use, having been shut off for the season, and they watched for a moment as New Yorkers climbed inside, finding a place to sit that would otherwise be off limits. She looked at Grace, kissed her cheek and whispered into her ear. "Why don't we take off, go somewhere else?"

Grace locked eyes with her and smiled. "My apartment isn't too far away from here," she said, and led Karen out of the park.

Past the infamous coffeehouse, the tree-laced street that Karen had at one point wanted so desperately to forget, Grace stopped in front of a building that Karen knew she had passed in her quest to find Grace before finally dialing her number. Karen's feet moved up the stairs to Grace's apartment, but her mind froze for a moment. She was so close. In all the time she had tried, over a year and a half of attempts to speed up the inevitable without looking like it was forced, why hadn't she found her? She was right here, the whole time. If things had been different, if she hadn't have called Grace, and if they hadn't have decided to get together, how long would it have taken for Grace to walk out the door the same moment that Karen was walking down the street on the way to the coffeehouse? How long would it have taken for something as random as that to catch her off guard?

Without warning, Karen let out a laugh of disbelief. She had tried to keep it in, knowing it would have to be explained, but she suddenly let it slip. Grace looked at Karen and started to smile. She always loved the way Karen's face exuded so much joy whenever she laughed. It was something she hadn't seen in anyone else. "What's wrong?" she said with a smirk in her voice.

"Nothing, I'm just surprised." She let her fingers hook around the belt loops of Grace's jeans, pulled her in closer to her. "If I would have known you were this close to the coffeehouse, I would have come for you sooner." She brushed her lips against Grace's, pulled away to smile. And all the time wasted giving her space, and all the agonizing over what could have happened if the coffeehouse conversation had gone differently had washed away by the taste of Grace's lips. It was something Grace and only Grace could ever achieve. And Karen knew she was lucky to have found it.

"Sometimes I wonder," Grace murmured, "why you stick around, even when you know I'm not able to give you everything that he can give you so easily."

And for what seemed like the first time, something said in the heat of the moment turned out to be the whole truth.

"Because you _are_ everything." She felt Grace plant a kiss on her shoulder. "You're everywhere. I can't think of anywhere else I'd want to be."


	14. In A Manner Of Speaking

"_In a manner of speaking, I just want to say  
>That I could never forget the way<br>You told me everything by saying nothing  
>In a manner of speaking, I don't understand<br>How love in silence becomes reprimand  
>But the way that I feel about you is beyond words."<br>~Nouvelle Vague, "In a Manner of Speaking" (Cover)_

_December 1992-January 1993_

It wasn't until she had time to think about their reunion at the bar, in the late-August heat and rain, that Grace realized that she absolutely loved playing dress-up.

Only for Karen. She never felt the desire to impress anyone else in that way—of course, she had her own methods of impression that might not be the norm, but they worked all the same—never thought to put too much time into the way she looked, never banked on looks being the deciding factor in her love life. It was never about the things that are skin deep with Karen, either. But the places they went were different, the things they did felt different. Somehow, it made Grace want to put on something outside of her normal wardrobe. Not always, but on certain nights, like tonight.

Especially tonight.

She took a look at herself in the mirror, a deep green dress to offset her red locks, and glanced at the clock that signaled ten minutes until Karen's arrival in the reflection. It was the first New Year's Eve she could truly get excited about, one that wouldn't be spent with a friend she had a past with (those awkward couple of celebrations with Will after she swore she got over everything), one that wouldn't be spent with a lover she wasn't particularly crazy about. This would be a New Year's Eve to be celebrated properly, not only with someone you could kiss at midnight, but with someone you could kiss at midnight that wouldn't over think it, or regret it in a few months.

She wanted it to be perfect.

Will had called her earlier in the day, inviting her to the fallback option she took every year that she didn't have a date for New Year's, and when she said she had plans, he shot a round of questions through the phone faster than she could ever possibly answer them. She could hear the smile in his voice as he pleaded for details, but all she gave him was, "It's fairly new,"—well, that wasn't completely a lie; the decision to change everything was, indeed, fairly new, although the existence of their connection was far from recent—"but it's nice, and it's going somewhere. That's all I'll tell you." She played it off as light-hearted. But in reality, she didn't want to tell him everything. And it made her nervous that she didn't want to tell him.

Grace tried to believe it when she told herself that the reason she didn't want to tell Will was because she wanted to keep Karen entirely to herself—as selfish as that sounded, it was a nicely wrapped explanation to the issue at hand. But deep down, she knew the truth. It wasn't the fact that she was involved with another woman that made her want to keep this a secret, but how they met in the first place. And of course Will would want to know how they met. What could she possibly say? "Oh, well, do you remember that Valentine's Day years ago when we ran into that woman at the restaurant? I slept with her after you broke up with me, and continued to sleep with her on and off for about six years before we decided that we wanted to take things further." Too much history, too much information that was so unlike what he knew her to be. It would never work.

But as soon as she looked at the clock one last time, and realized Karen was downstairs in a cab waiting for her, all of that faded away. She draped a coat over her bare shoulders and made her building, immediately spotting her yellow chariot. One look at the empty seat in the back, and Grace saw the red rose propped up against the grey. In one motion, she picked the flower up, slid in, and met Karen's lips as the cab took off.

"Just so you know," Grace said as she pulled away, "I've got a bottle of champagne in the fridge, in case you feel like sticking around tonight." She let a smile play on her face. "How did you get out of tonight?" She had figured that she would have to take Will up on his yearly offer this time around, that Karen would be obligated to spend the night with Stan. Because, after all, that was supposed to be the legitimate relationship, although it seemed to Grace that it was becoming more and more of a farce.

"He has to work late, gave an apology that didn't sound nearly as believable as he wanted it to sound. Not that it matters. This is where I want to be tonight, anyway." Karen turned to face Grace and put an arm around her shoulders. "You look gorgeous tonight," she said as Grace's smile began to grow wider. That was another reason Grace liked to play dress-up.

Karen noticed. Karen always noticed. And she always made it a point to vocalize that recognition. It was something that, if other lovers have done it, was not said as often as she heard it spill from Karen's lips.

They pulled up to a familiar building that at first Grace could not place in her mind. She looked at Karen with a smile of confusion on her face that made the dark-haired woman laugh. "You really don't remember?" she asked. "I ran into you here on Valentine's Day…god, almost six years ago."

Grace let out a laugh of recognition. "Back to one of the scenes of the crime, huh?" she said with a giggle in her voice. She looked out of the cab's window, knew that as soon as she walked into the place, it would come back to her in a second.

"I figured you deserved a less awkward dinner here," Karen said as they got out of the car. She took the hand of the red head as Grace put the rose to her nose, and as they walked in, they saw that nothing had changed about the inside of the restaurant. Walk straight ahead for a few steps, and you'd be at the booth Grace sat in with Will. A little further, and you'd come to the bar that Karen was waiting at. A few steps further, and you'd find where Grace decided to lie to Will so she would be able to leave.

They were taken to a table in a secluded corner, an area Grace didn't notice the first time around, although there wasn't any reason for her to notice it the first time around. She could hear a soft, smooth jazz fall from the ceiling speakers as they took their seats, and she couldn't help but look at Karen, the way she held the menu in her hands, the lock of hair falling in front of her eyes as she studied, and knew that this was what set her apart from everybody else that Grace knew. The way that she could say everything without speaking a word. Even now, this action of Karen's that really has nothing to do with Grace exudes a compassion that she had never seen before. All that she does in the red head's presence, she does for Grace. It was new. But Grace liked it.

The dinner could have been filled with silence, save for the music in the background, and Grace wouldn't have minded it; she would have been happy just to watch how Karen moved. But after the waiter brought their plates, Karen smiled and spoke to her softly. "I almost didn't walk over to you the first time. I knew it was you, it wasn't as if I was uncertain that you wouldn't be who you thought and I would look like an idiot. I just didn't know if it would shatter the good feeling I got every time I thought about that first night. Needless to say, it didn't."

"If we're being honest here, I almost didn't walk over to you, either. It was one flash of a moment, nervousness, really. I thought about how we met, how much it affected me. And I didn't know if I could go through that again."

"So why did you come back to me?"

Grace smiled. "The entire time between that first night and the encounter here, I couldn't stop thinking about you. And it turns out I felt some sort of pull towards you anyway, so why fight it?"

She heard Karen laugh. "You are something else," Karen said. Suddenly, she stood up, extended her hand towards Grace. "I just want to see," she said before Grace could ask what she was doing, "if that pull you mentioned still works." And as soon as Karen felt her touch, she helped Grace up and pulled her towards her body, began to sway in a dance that no one else saw but them.

Everything that Grace felt about Karen's actions had been perfectly exemplified in this moment. The way her body moved against Grace's, the spontaneity of it all, the fact that she could even make background music something to sway to, told her that she was safe in this relationship. She wished she had the ability to do the same. But because of this, everything became clear.

Because of this, she knew it even before she heard it slip from Karen's lips. "I love you," whispered into her ear.

She kissed Karen's cheek as she felt her arm wrap around her tighter. "I love you too, Karen."

* * *

><p>When Karen got home in the morning, having had to reluctantly leave Grace's bed, Stan was in the kitchen with a cup of coffee. He looked at her and thought that her body language told him everything. He watched her give a quick glance and a half-hearted smile over at him before retreating upstairs. He could have interrogated her, asked her where she had been, and he could have listened to an answer that was most likely not the truth. But he saved his words, and saved her the unexpected effort of concocting a plausible lie. He saved her the embarrassment of what she didn't know.<p>

She didn't know that he had come home from work earlier than he expected. She didn't know he had expected to see her when he walked through the door. She didn't know that he waited up for her. She didn't know that he eventually gave up and went to bed. She didn't know that he wanted to wake up early to catch her walking in, intending to play it off as not being able to sleep.

She didn't know that he had had his suspicions about her for a few months.

She didn't know that when she walked away without saying a word, he figured out what she was up to.


	15. Float

"_You're so pretty floating through the air  
>How you pause by despair<br>Bullet flies toward disrepair  
>Don't land, don't land…<em>

…_Our love was built on heavy things  
>Our love survives and sings<br>Our love, always, it had wings  
>Don't land, don't land"<br>~Erin McKeown, excerpts from "Float"_

_April 1993_

"Don't look at me that way, damn it! Don't you dare try to make me feel guilty about any of this! You know that this is absolutely ridiculous!"

"What am I supposed to do, Karen, look the other way when you leave for hours?"

"You never seemed to care before, Stan. I don't get it, I really don't. It's been like this for years, especially the other way around, and I've never complained. Now you magically care. What the hell changed all of a sudden?"

If she wasn't looking for an answer to her question, if she had just thrown it out rhetorically, Karen would have stormed out of the building and gone somewhere else, anywhere else (probably Grace's place, let's admit it; maybe go somewhere to unwind after she grabs Grace to unwind with, spill what's been going on between her and Stan, while Grace silently makes the case to leave him altogether). But whether it was a genuine curiosity, or simply blind rage, she really wanted to know the answer.

She couldn't remember what started this fight in the first place, although that was nothing new. Another day, another argument, another reason to run into Grace's arms. She could feel that something was off with him when she woke up this morning, maybe a look she gave her early on in the day. The next thing she knew, she could feel his eyes on her right as she was getting ready to walk out of their front door. She turned on her heels, asked him what his problem was, and when she heard him ask her where she was going, she lost it. It was her life. Why should she have to explain herself? Why didn't he ever have to explain himself? Whatever the reason, an explanation could not help their conversation from escalating this time around. But, if she had to be honest, she wasn't completely sure that an explanation would help at all.

"I'm waiting for your answer," Karen said impatiently. She had planned on going to the market to pick up a fresh red rose before surprising Grace at her door. It wasn't as if the red head was expecting her. It was merely the desire to make her sudden plan work that had her foot tapping and her eyes straining for the door. She heard the huff in Stan's voice, saw the look in his eyes, but she didn't care. She'd wait until she got what she wanted.

"Because this isn't like you, Karen!" She fixed her eyes on his, and before she could get a word out, he started up again. "I was always fine with you going out alone. It's not as if we have to do everything together. You are your own person, and you have a life outside of this relationship. I get that. That's not what I have a problem with. It's when you go out nearly every night, without any explanation at all. You don't have to tell me what you're doing every second of every day. But when you're gone for hours at a time, and you give me no idea where you are or any time frame of when you're coming back. I get worried."

"Well it's about damn time, Stanley!" He looked taken aback by her outburst, and she took a little bit of pride in that. "I can't remember the last time you took an interest in where I was. I can't remember the last time you cared to inform me when you would be working late, or when you would have to meet with a client. I don't get any of that. Why should I give it to you?"

"It doesn't mean that I don't love you."

It was a soft comment amidst the brutal tones they had been using before. She had no idea that he had suspected her of cheating for at least a few months now. She had no idea that he was torn between fighting for her by calling her out, or letting her go for something that obviously made her happier. He knew that if he asked, she probably wouldn't give him the truth if she was seeing someone. But he had been dying to ask ever since Karen walked in on New Year's morning. He spoke with the same soft voice.

"Is there another man, Kare?"

"No, there's not another man." Well. At least she told the truth. There wasn't another man. He wouldn't catch her in a lie, although she was certainly deceiving him. "Is that all? Can I go now?" She winced at the way it sounded, like she was asking for permission when she was fully capable of leaving while he was mid-sentence.

"Wait. There's something I need to tell you. I've got to take a last-minute business trip to London, fix some things that have gone awry over there. I have to take a red-eye tonight. I'll be gone for about two weeks, maybe later depending on how quickly we can get things done."

"Why didn't you tell me sooner? Why did you wait until this afternoon to fill me in, Stan?"

"I only found out about it the other day, what was I supposed to do?" His voice had escalated back to its starting point. Karen couldn't take it. This is not how she wanted to spend her afternoon; it was far from the image she had of this day. She had to get out of here, before she lost all sanity, before she had the chance to verbally rip him apart. She stepped backwards, keeping her eye on Stan.

"Only what you ask of me." And with that, she was gone.

* * *

><p>Grace opened up all of the windows to her apartment, feeling the light April breeze on her skin and hearing the buzz of traffic three stories below. There were times like these when she could hear the life going on down on the concrete, and she couldn't believe that she was a part of it. Thinking back on her teenage years as an awkward girl from Schenectady dreaming of leaving her hometown for neon lights. Back then she never thought she would live a city life.<p>

Then again, she never thought she would live a life like this, either.

She missed Karen today. She wasn't sure what it was about this afternoon, but she longed to share it with her, all the while knowing that she shouldn't. They were spending a lot of time together, which she absolutely loved, but she also knew that too much time would make it harder and harder for Karen to keep herself under Stan's radar. No, that wasn't it. She wasn't under it. She floated above it, avoiding the trouble and the crashes that she wouldn't be able to fix. She always did it with such beauty and grace. And as much as Grace wanted to spend every waking moment with her, she didn't want to get Karen into any trouble. She didn't want that on her shoulders.

Still, the desire was there, it was always there.

Grace sprawled out on the living room couch, closed her eyes to listen to the traffic moving underneath her, marveling at how serene and peaceful the city could be at certain times. Almost lulling herself into an afternoon sleep. Almost…until she suddenly heard a knock on the door, jolting her into reality. She looked through the peephole through the door, and almost as if she had willed her there through her thoughts, found Karen on the other side. When she opened the door, she found Karen looking distracted, and immediately she knew that Stan had something to do with this.

"I was a little flustered getting here. It slipped my mind to go to the market."

Grace smiled, more trying to comfort Karen than at the actual remark. "It's okay. I told you that you don't have to do that." She took Karen by the hand, kissed her cheek and led her inside, closing the door behind them. "I was actually stopping myself from calling you today. I didn't want him to get suspicious." She still couldn't say Stan's name out loud. Somehow, she reasoned that if she said it, he would become real, and that was something that she couldn't deal with. Not just yet, not when everything was going so well between them. She couldn't imagine what would happen if she ever came face to face with the poor guy.

"Well, it's not like it would have mattered anyway." Karen saw the confused look on Grace's face. "He called me out on spending so much time away and not giving him a heads up. It was a rather unneeded shouting match. He told me that he thought I was sleeping with another man. That gave me a little leeway to make him think that nothing was going on, since he never asked if I was sleeping with another woman. I couldn't take being in that house another minute."

Grace took Karen in her arms, let the hum of the streets surround them for a moment. That image of Karen floating above all the potential trouble changed in that instant, to an image of Karen pausing in midair, frozen by the stress and anguish of the situation. Karen could very easily crash to the ground, unable to fix what she had hoped to control. And Grace wanted to do everything in her power to makes sure that she didn't land, that she kept on soaring through the sky, beautiful where she belonged. "I'm sorry," she said after she felt Karen's arms finally wrap around her waist. "I never meant for any of that to happen to you, you know that. I never meant to make your life any harder than it has to be."

"It's not you," Karen murmured. "It's never you." She sighed and felt the heat of Grace's body against hers. "Anyway, I have some time to think over my next move. He's taking a red-eye flight to London tonight for business. He'll be gone for two weeks, or so he says. I just don't think I can face him again today. If I knew there was a time when he'd be out…"

"Why don't you stay here for the night?" Grace asked. "In fact, his business trip leaves a lot of uninterrupted time. So if you feel like you might get lonely, you could always stay with me." She tried a smirk on for size, trying to get a reaction out of Karen. "We could get your things in the morning, when you know he's gone."

"I would love that," Karen said with the first smile Grace had seen on her today. It was odd, this apparent role reversal. Where at one point, Karen had been the one to try to give Grace a solution to her problems, it had been switched. Grace wasn't sure that she liked it, Karen not being as sure in her actions as she usually was. But at least she had helped Karen avoid a crash, at least she had kept her floating in the air. Their love was strong.

And that's all that mattered.


	16. Corner Of Your Heart

"_I will leave this man  
>Just to occupy one minute of your day<br>Just to occupy one minute of your day  
>Just to sleep underneath your bed<br>Just to stay in the corner of your heart."  
>~Ingrid Michaelson, "Corner of Your Heart"<em>

_April 1993_

"What do you think would happen if I left him?"

It was a rather odd question that followed their actions tonight. That touch…oh, that touch. Even after all these years, Karen knew exactly how to please Grace. Almost as if her body was a map that had been memorized the minute it was unveiled, and had been engraved in Karen's mind ever since. Their skin the only thing that mattered in the moment. Grace was still never the one to initiate it; she thought that after all this time, her nervousness over her inexperience would fade, but she was here tonight, letting Karen touch her in ways she wished she could reciprocate. When she saw Karen rest on the bed beside her, Grace rested her head on her chest, and had a clear view of the vase, even in the blue-black April night.

Karen had taken it upon herself to go down to the market early in the morning, while Grace was still asleep, to buy a red rose for the red head to wake up to. Grace had taken it upon herself to dig out an old vase that, to be honest, she never thought would see the light of day again, filled it with water, and placed it on top of the dresser in her bedroom, so it would be there at the end of each night, and the beginning of each day. There were nine roses resting in the glass—Karen bought two of them the first day, making up for the frantic rose-less way she showed up the week before—and Grace focused on them as she tried to answer Karen's question.

"Emotionally, I think you would be a lot happier. You never tell me any of the good things about him, although I don't know why you would. It wouldn't make that much sense if you did. But in actuality, if you left him, you'd have to settle."

"What are you talking about?"

"If you left him for me, I would never be able to give you any of the things that he's able to give you so easily. His job gives the two of you so much security. I'm barely making it at this design firm that makes me absolutely miserable. And I know I've been talking about opening up my own company, but let's face it, that's never going to happen if I keep going at the rate I am. You'd be reduced to a cheap apartment in the Village, an incredibly small bed that just barely fits the both of us. I can't give you Park Avenue."

"Maybe I can sleep underneath the bed," Karen said with a quiet little laugh and a smile that the red head could not see. She kissed the crown of Grace's head. "I never said I wanted Park Avenue. Besides, you give me more than he ever could. You pay attention. You care. That's more than I could ask for. I don't care about financial security. I lived without it before I met him, and I can live without it if I leave him."

Grace lifted her head, propped herself up on her elbow. "Are you serious about this?" she asked. It was a valid question; she understood not hearing anything about her desires to be free from him when they would only hook up once every few months, but when they decided to pursue a relationship, she thought that she would hear the question, even playfully quipped, at least once. This was the first time she was hearing of it. She had to ask.

"Of course I am. I haven't been fair to myself. More importantly, I haven't been fair to you, Gracie."

"Karen, I've told you countless times that I'm just happy to get as much time with you as I can. I mean, it's not ideal, but as long as I get to see you at some point, it's okay."

Well. That wasn't entirely true. If Grace had it her way, Stan wouldn't be in the picture, and they could be left alone to enjoy their days—the entirety of their days, not just a few hours here and there, not with the knowledge that Karen would have to sneak back home at some point before he woke up, not with the worry that if Grace calls the phone line that is meant only for Karen's use, he might overhear their conversation, sinking Karen deeper into the things she was desperately trying to get away from. It was the world's fault anyway, for making all of this sound incredibly intoxicating. The word "affair" had been twisted to make it seem seductive, enticing, something with more passion than any legitimate relationship could hold. And it was fun for a while. Soon enough, though, as they learned more and more about each other, Grace realized that she didn't want the affair anymore. She wanted the legitimate relationship. But if this was the only way that she was allowed to be with Karen, then that's what she would have to deal with. The reward would be greater in the end.

"You say that, but I know you don't fully mean it."

"How do you know?"

"Because I don't fully mean it when I say it. The time I spend with you is amazing, and I can't believe it took me this long to find someone that makes me this happy, but I'm lucky. Some people never find it. I thought I found it in him, but obviously I was wrong. It's not my real life when I'm not with you. It's someone else's life, it's a lie. I don't want to lie anymore. And I know you're starting to feel weary in the state that we're in. Sooner or later, you're going to realize that you don't want to compromise like this anymore. If I leave him, I get to be with you during the minutes I've never seen. I get to stay in your heart."

"Karen, you'll always be there," Grace said as she brushed her lips against Karen's. She put on a joking smile. "Time has taught me that I can't get rid of you that easily. Not that I would ever want to." She tried to will a smile from Karen's lips, but she saw quickly that now was not the time to joke, now was serious. "Listen to me. As long as you don't think of me as some sort of quick fix to your problems, then there's nothing to worry about. I'll always be here. And yeah, it would be nice if it was just the two of us, but it's not, and I can deal with that."

"That's not something you should have to deal with."

"Maybe not, but at least you're here." They lay in silence for a moment, neither of them making a move to break the thickness of it. Perhaps it was the effect of Grace's comment, savoring the moment they had together before reality ripped them apart again, but Grace knew that that probably wasn't it. Karen was still thinking over her initial question. Karen was still thinking about the pros and cons of leaving Stan. And Grace knew that she wasn't making a good case for herself, for why she should be Karen's sanctuary. But what else was she supposed to say? Of course she wanted Karen to leave him for her. Of course she wanted her here all the time, free from the worry that usually plagued them. But what kind of person would she be, if she jumped at the chance, if she said, "Sure, throw away the life you know and come build something new and possibly unstable with me!" and put on a grin? Karen had to look at it from both sides.

And as much as Grace didn't want to assume the role, she had to be the responsible one and make sure it happened.

She spoke again. "You know I'll support you, whatever your decision is. If you want to leave, then you know you have a home here. I just want to make sure that you've thought it through."

"I've definitely thought it through," Karen said. "And I realized that from that first night, when you brought me back to your old apartment, you were the one who was going to make everything okay again."

Grace furrowed her brow in confusion. "Old apartment? What?" she said, and then a moment of realization. "Oh, that. Well, I kind of have a confession to make with that one. That wasn't my apartment. It was an old college friend's place. When he heard about my break-up with Will, he gave me the key to his apartment in case I wanted to get away from campus over Thanksgiving break and stay there for a couple of days. But instead of doing that, I brought you back to his place because I thought it would look really pathetic if I brought you back to a dorm room. That was the first and only time I've ever been in that place."

Karen looked at her as she started to smile, wider and wider until she could not contain her laugh. "Well, it's good to know that even when we first met, you had my interests in mind." She rolled over to hover above Grace, leaned in and pressed her lips against the red head's. When she pulled away, the smile on Grace's confirmed everything she had been trying to decide. She wanted to see that smile all day, every day, and there was only one way that she could do that. "I'm going to leave him. I'll talk to him when he comes back from London." She brushed a lock of Grace's curls away from her face, behind her ear. "I may need a little help, though."

"I can help you get your things out of the house. I don't know how much room I've got here, but I wouldn't mind stepping over a few boxes if it meant your happiness. We'll get a bigger bed. You know, so you won't have to sleep underneath it." Grace laughed as Karen came to rest against her skin, wrapped her arms around her as she sighed. "Are you sure you want to do this?" she asked.

"It feels right."

Grace pulled the covers over their bodies and took another glance at the vase of red roses. Those last three words hovered silently in the air as she felt Karen's breathing even out in sleep. It seemed so easy, as if just saying the words would make the action so effortless, as if saying it so simply will make the actuality of it result in no repercussions. She never even met Stan, but Grace figured that he would put up a fight; anyone in his position would, and he would be crazy not to. But if they could get through this, they could get through anything.

She drifted off to sleep with Karen in her arms and the thought in her head that vases of red roses would be hers. The feeling of Karen in her arms every night would be hers. That touch would be only hers.

It wouldn't be long now.


	17. Fever Dream

"_Some days, her shape in the doorway  
>Will speak to me<br>A bird's wing on the window  
>Sometimes, I'll hear when she's sleeping<br>Her fever dream  
>A language on her face<br>I want your flowers like babies want God's love  
>Or maybe as sure as tomorrow will come"<br>~Iron & Wine, "Fever Dream"_

_April 1993_

She was woken up by the early morning sunlight shining into the blind-less bedroom window, and in an odd but very welcome change of events, found that she had opened her eyes before Karen did. If you were going to do it, Grace, do it now. It was the most opportune time. Now was her chance to make her move.

Grace slowly got out of bed so as not to disturb Karen in her peaceful state, slid a pair of jeans onto her bare legs and threw the sweatshirt she picked up off of the floor over the ratty t-shirt she had slept in. She took a deep breath to smell the twelve roses that now lived in her vase before looking over at the bed, seeing Karen in the throes of a dream. She wanted desperately to know what she dreamed about so vividly. The twitching smile on her face, her hand clutching the pillow, the soft but distinctive sigh trying to make its way through her closed lips. The sheets tossed around from sleep and Grace's departure to expose Karen's leg, and knowing the clock was ticking, Grace took a moment to marvel at her lover in the most natural state she's seen her in. This is what Karen looked like without the fear of being caught, without any worry whatsoever. If Karen was beautiful before, she was absolutely stunning now.

Grace wished she could make her feel like that all the time. But she would have to wait a few days in order for that to happen.

She pulled herself away from the bedroom, slipped on a pair of shoes and tiptoed out the door. She never got the chance to do this before, and although it was such a simple action, the thought of going through with it gave her a small thrill, and she wondered if Karen ever felt like this. When she reached the concrete sidewalk outside of her building, she stopped for a moment to get used to the early morning chill before making her way towards the nearest market.

It had been three days since Karen first posed the question of leaving Stan, and if Grace had to be honest, it was all she could think about. Each moment of silence gave way to the thoughts that should have been boxed up in her mind until they were given the green light to be unleashed. It happened when Karen was in the shower, when she fell asleep easier than Grace could. It happened when she was wrapped in Karen's arms on the couch, the glow of the television shining on them. It sometimes even happened while Karen was in the middle of a sentence. The thought crept in of how it could be all the time.

Grace could picture it. And, god, was it a brilliant sight, if the near two weeks they had spent together was any sign of what was to come. It was clear that Karen was quickly adapting to life in the tiny apartment that Grace called home. And she was getting used to waking up to her every morning, watching her in the doorway as she smiled and waited for Grace to follow, hearing her flip the pages of a novel while her feet rested against Grace's thigh on the couch. It was everything that she had ever wanted for the two of them; it was everything that they were supposed to be, without the difficulty of their situation.

But still, Grace couldn't help but be a little apprehensive about it all.

It was one thing to think about it, to share the ideals of a future that didn't seem likely anytime soon with Karen, grin at the creativity of their imagination and use it as a form of comfort, and sigh at the beauty of it all before putting it to rest to use for another time of need. It was one thing to playfully say at night that they would sleep under the bed or step over boxes in order to make this a home that would work. It was one thing to say that Park Avenue wasn't as exciting or as blissful as the place they were in right now. It was another to completely act on it.

And when they did act on it, Grace was afraid that the love that she saw in Karen's eyes would eventually turn to hate for what she couldn't do, and Grace could not bear the thought of that ever happening.

She saw a box by her coffee table yesterday that wasn't there before, filled with books that looked like they had barely been touched (either Karen was meticulous in her treatment of her library, or this was a large pile that she had bought ages ago and never got around to reading). That's what started this intensified worry about the execution of their plan. Karen must have gone back to the Park Avenue penthouse while she was at work, and she knew that nothing but the best intentions were the motive—more likely than not, Karen didn't want to make things awkward by bringing Grace along, or making a big deal out of going uptown. Karen hadn't said anything about the box's presence, or the fact that she had ever left the apartment while Grace was working. Really, there was no reason to—the boxes were going to start popping up anyway, and they both knew where they were coming from—but it was the action itself that startled Grace. It had started already. And as much as she wanted it to begin, as much as she desperately wanted it to finally begin, she couldn't help but wonder.

What would happen when Karen got bored? Grace had thought about it so much that the question had turned from "if" to "when" in a matter of days. And in her mind, Karen was bound to get bored, despite the many claims that it was never going to happen. The lifestyle she got used to with Stan was one that called for things Grace couldn't even dream of, things that she had never done and probably will never do. And once it settled in that Karen would no longer be able to do these things, she would realize she made a mistake.

It was because of this that Grace wanted to start throwing little surprises into their time together, starting with this trip to the market. Because if she could shake up their relationship in tiny ways, it would take Karen's mind off of everything that was missing. Grace loved her to much to bore her.

She reached the market, found an aging man sitting outside with the flower display. He looked worn, like he should have slept at least two hours longer than he had, but tried to appear as though it didn't matter. He caught sight of the red head looking through the roses and pulling one from the container. "You filling in for the dark haired woman?" he asked in a voice that told her that he was not amused by the fact that he had to be selling flowers this early in the morning.

"Which woman?" Grace asked as she handed over her money, knowing full well who he was talking about.

"The one who buys my roses every morning."

She couldn't help but smile. "I guess I am," she said and thanked the man as she turned to walk back to her apartment. Maybe it won't be so bad. Maybe she's making it out to be a bigger deal than it was. Maybe Karen will never get bored. Karen was the one to buy the roses. Karen was the one to first pose the idea of leaving Stan. It was all her doing. And Grace knew that she was lucky because of that. She thought back to the images of their life together that they had created over long talks and blue-black nights, and realized that she wanted that more than anything. And when a second box showed up in the apartment, followed by a third, and a fourth, there would be no apprehension, only excitement, only love. When Karen comes back from Park Avenue after breaking the news to Stan, she will shower her with the support she deserves, and make her forget about whatever he said or did, because there is no doubt he will throw around some nasty words. Then, after all the time they have waited, it can begin. This is it, Grace. This is finally it.

When she got back home, Grace tiptoed back to the bedroom and found that Karen was still asleep, although she had shifted since Grace left. Her hand was outstretched, as if waiting for someone to give her something, and Grace could not waste this perfect opportunity. Quickly, she grabbed a piece of paper and a pen, scribbled a quick note before rolling it up and tying it to the stem of the rose with a piece of string. She walked into the bedroom, and softly settled the flower in Karen's open hand; her sleeping beauty didn't even flinch at the new touch. She planted a gentle kiss on Karen's forehead and made her way towards the living room, and out the door.

She waited for Karen to follow suit.

* * *

><p>The sunlight was hot on her leg, shaking her out of the slumber she was so comfortable in.<p>

When Karen started to come out of sleep, she felt the absence of another body lying next to her and knew that something was off. Grace wasn't there. It was the first time she had woken up alone in the time she was staying at the red head's apartment, and it felt so foreign to her. This wasn't the way it was supposed to go; she knew Grace well enough to know that even if she did wake up before her, which was a rarity in itself, she would lie in bed, resting until Karen woke up and kissed her skin. It made her think that the day was going to be wrong, that something was looming and it wasn't good.

She opened her eyes slowly, adjusting to the sunlight, and found a single red rose resting in her hand, a small roll of paper tied to the stem with string. Suddenly, the day started to seem not as though it started out off, just in a differently beautiful way. Her hands still a bit weak from sleep, she untied the bow made from the string, fumbling a few times before getting the knot undone. She unrolled the bit of paper to reveal Grace's handwriting, the gorgeous curves in the words, the careful heart drawn at the end of her sentence.

_Come meet me at __the__ coffeehouse._

"The" underlined as if there were any other place that Karen was thinking she could be. They had been in several coffeehouses over the months, but they always kept coming back to the one in the Village, the one they had originally broken off in, the one they stop in at least once a week so they could create good memories to make up for the one bad one. She got out of bed, slid the rose into the vase with all the others, and quickly threw on some clothes and teased her hair. She was going to meet Grace at the coffeehouse.

The coffeehouse.

But she had to make a quick stop somewhere first.


	18. Fugitive

"_I stood without clothes and danced in the sand  
>I was aching with freedom, kissing the damned<br>I said, 'Remember this, it's how it should be.'  
>Oh, baby, I said it's all in our hands<br>Got to learn to respect what we don't understand  
>We are fortunate ones, fortunate ones, I swear<br>Hide yourself for me  
>I will hide myself for you<br>…All for you."  
>~Indigo Girls, "Fugitive"<em>

_April 1993_

The dream that Karen had that morning was one that she had on and off for a few months now. It became more frequent if she had gone an extended period of time without seeing Grace, if some commitment to Stan kept her from her happiness, but even now, even in the near two weeks of being with nobody but Grace, it appears. And she is never disappointed when it does. It was always beautiful, it was always perfect, it was always something that she did not want to wake up from. And it always played out the same way.

In a deep enough sleep, she'll find herself on a remote, nondescript beach, no one else around. Her clothes are strewn on the warm sand, and she stands there as if she has been born anew. Her skirt to her left, the water coming to touch the blouse she once wore, her shoes so far away from her that she could not see them—she had taken them off as soon as her heels hit the sand. She ran to the place that she now stands in a blind run, racing towards the water, if only to wait. The sun is blinding for a moment, and it makes her unsure that she would be able to see what she was looking for. But it always comes. She could always see it. And she knows that it's something she could always depend on.

In the distance, she finds Grace running towards her on the sand in the same fugitive run she had once taken, her shoes in her hand until she gets tired of the weight in her grasp, and tosses them to the side. Karen can hear nothing but the water as Grace gets closer and closer, her red hair glowing in the sunlight. She makes herself wait to outstretch her arms until Grace is within earshot, and she can let out a soft "Gracie," as if it was reassurance as to where she was. And then she feels it. The fabric of Grace's clothing against her bare skin as the red head wraps her arms around Karen's neck, her feet lifted off of the sand for a moment before Karen rests her on the ground.

Piece by piece, Karen slips the fabric off of Grace's skin until they are at the same level. And Grace always knows that it's just the two of them, and she always smiles when she feels the cotton of her shirt slide off of her shoulders. It is when they are completely bare that Karen pulls her back into her arms and, the water lapping on the shoreline as their only music, they start to sway in a dance of celebration, of solitude and freedom, of every obstacle they had come across and defeated. It is only them.

And in a warm whisper, Grace whispers, "Remember this moment." Remember it. And Karen knows what that sentence holds. Remember the touch. Remember the feeling. Remember the perfection. It's how it should always be. It's how it will always be, as long as you want it. Every time, Grace has a chance to say those three words before Karen wakes up.

And when she woke up this morning, she was determined to make today feel like this dream. There was just one obstacle, the quick trip to the Park Avenue penthouse she was determined to leave in a couple of days, to defeat before she could make that happen.

She wanted to take Grace somewhere they didn't normally go. Since her, at first temporary, move-in to the Village apartment she was quickly longing to call home, she and Grace had resorted to little places in the neighborhood. It wasn't as if Karen minded it; in fact she loved the break from anything she could pin to her life with Stan. But then she remembered New Year's Eve, the restaurant and their table in the secluded corner, the soft jazz and the slow dance. And more than anything, she wanted to recreate that tonight. But somewhere different. Somewhere she had never been with Grace before. Somewhere with a clean slate. She knew of a place uptown that Stan had once mentioned, a place that they ended up never going to, whether he forgot or just decided against it. It could be only theirs. They would go there tonight, and toast to the new chapter they would soon embark upon.

The cab slowed to a stop in front of the Park Avenue building she had been dreading. When she walked in, it was quiet, as if it had not been disturbed. And why would it have been disturbed? Stan was not supposed to come back for at least a couple more days, the house would be silent. Still, as if not to disrupt the peace that this place had suddenly inherited, she found herself tiptoeing through the place, up the stairs, until she got to her closet and turned on the light.

This room was far too extravagant, for anybody. And looking at it after nearly two weeks of being away from it, the closet made Karen a little sick that she had actually gotten used to this. All of this. The house was too big, the closet was too full. The clothes that were dangling on the hangers were too expensive. Is this what she had become? Is this what Grace was meant to take her away from? The first thing she was going to do once everything she wanted to bring into her new life was in Grace's apartment was buy a new wardrobe. Something that fit the woman she had become.

She found a sleek black dress in the deepest part of the closet and pulled it off of its hanger. She held it in the crook of her arm and walked out of the closet, thinking that she wouldn't need to grab anything from this room once she officially moved.

It made the thought of moving itself so much lighter.

Down the stairs, she made one last tour around the bottom level of the penthouse, taking in everything she would eventually be giving up. If at some point in the past the thought of leaving all of it behind was unbearable, she had a great smile on her face at the thought of tossing it away now. All she needed was the red head that had so randomly come into her life almost eight years ago and would not let go. In the time she had lived in this place, she never once felt that this was truly her home. It was Stan's home, let's face it. She was merely a guest, making the penthouse look a little more like a family could live here.

But it wasn't fooling her.

She made her way into the kitchen, saw the small wine rack displaying a miniscule portion of their bottles in the house. She picked a red, held it in her hand, and decided that she would keep it for herself and Grace, to open up once they got home from dinner tonight. He wasn't going to miss one bottle. It was the last thing she ever intended to get from him. She might as well make it count.

She was in the foyer, about to make it through the door, when she heard the sound of footsteps and froze. Nobody else was supposed to be here. This wasn't real. This couldn't be.

"Karen?"

Oh god. No. She wanted to close her eyes, go back to the dream she had this morning, back to the secluded beach, back to the dance with their feet in the sand. She wanted to feel the fabric as she slipped it off Grace's shoulders, her stomach, her hips. Why couldn't she get away?

"I knew it. I just knew it. Why wouldn't you just tell me when I asked?" Stan's voice was like a knife through her heart. She turned to look at him, and saw the mixture of sadness and confirmation, with just a hint of anger and betrayal. This wasn't how she wanted to let him know. So she did the only think she could think of to do.

She ran.

She was a fugitive, she and Grace both, in a way. Always running, never safe unless they were with each other, and only each other. This moment, if anything, proved it, breaking out into a run with her dress in one hand, and the stolen bottle of wine in the other, racing down the stairs and hoping that he didn't have the good sense to follow her. She paced down two blocks before hailing a cab for the Village, making sure he wouldn't be able to see her slide into the yellow vehicle and take off.

They were fugitives. And Karen would make sure that they would not fall. No matter what that entailed.

* * *

><p>When Grace looked up at the door's opening, she found Karen looking radiant as ever, but a little distracted. She watched her as she stared absently at the room. The red head piped up, letting Karen know where she was. "I didn't think you would sleep in so late," she said with a smile in her voice. "I would have left a little later."<p>

Karen looked in surprise as she found Grace and sat down across from her. "I didn't mean to keep you waiting so long, honey," she said softly.

"It's okay. But you don't seem like yourself. Is everything alright?"

It was a moment of truth, and Karen didn't know if she should take it. She didn't know how to word it, what to say. She wanted time to process everything. It just happened; how could she explain things in a way that made sense, when it was barely logical to her? Now was not the time. If there was any way to postpone a moment of truth, she would find a way to do it.

"Yeah. Everything's okay. But I want to make it up to you." She meant making her wait, she meant everything that had happened that Grace didn't know about, but she didn't speak about it. It would seem like an extravagant way to make up for being a bit late to the coffeehouse, but she didn't care. "Let me take you out to dinner tonight, somewhere nice." She forced a smile, tried to make a joke. "We'll dress up and pretend to be fancy."

Grace laughed and said, "Sounds like a plan to me." She took Karen's hand across the table and kissed her palm before getting in line to order for the both of them.

Karen sighed and tried to figure out how to keep from being a fugitive to Grace, too.


	19. Coming Home To Me

"_It's a world full of bar rooms and alleys  
>Of blue nights and red river valleys<br>When you feel like a shirt and a tie or like dirt  
>Or a lion and no one can see<br>You're coming home to me, just remember  
>You're coming home to me"<br>~Patty Griffin, "Coming Home to Me"_

_April 1993_

"Come on, I've got an idea."

She said it with a glow in her eye and something in her voice that made her sound like an excited child with a big revelation. She grabbed an old comforter from the closet that she hadn't used on her bed in years, and motioned for Karen to grab the bottle of wine and a couple of glasses before leading her out the door and onto the roof of her Village apartment building. Grace had never been up there before, never had any reason to make the trip, but after the dinner that Karen had planned, she thought that she should bring something to the table as well. And what could be better than a little wine under the Manhattan sky?

All night, Karen appeared as though something were weighing on her mind heavily, and as much as Grace wanted to know what it was, so that she could help in any way she could, she also knew that Karen would come to her eventually. She didn't want to push it. If it came out in the dark of the night tonight, then so be it. But as far as Grace was concerned, she was meant to take all the bad things away from her mind and soothe it for as long as she could. They were lying down on the comforter cheek to cheek, their legs on opposite ends of the fabric when Grace let out a contented sigh.

"I used to lie out on the lawn at night when I was a teenager, after my parents had gone to sleep, and just look at the stars, thinking of how better my life would be under city lights. I was never cut out for upstate suburbia. And now that I'm here, I'm convinced that I was right; my life is better under city lights. But every once in a while I miss being able to see the stars at night."

"I should take you out on the water sometime," Karen said softly, letting her fingers rest in Grace's red locks. "We'll go further away from the brightness of this place, all the neon. It's easier to see the stars that way. That's what I used to do to take my mind off of everything, when things were barely tolerable and I needed to collect my thoughts. But I always had to use his boat, and now I don't really feel like being around his possessions."

"So what do you do now?"

"I look at you. And I see nothing but beauty and light and all of the things that make me see the world in a less cynical point of view than I always have. It makes me wonder how the hell I made it through the world without you sometimes."

Silence. Karen knew that the words that had formed a ball in her throat were going to ruin the moonlit calm that Grace had created. She knew that there was no easy way to go about doing this, and she wasn't completely ready yet. But nothing was ever easy, and she had to slowly wade in water sometime. Stan was home. She was planning on sleeping at Grace's for one more night, unless she could maneuver her way around a barrage of questions from Stan and his attempts to make their relationship work (where were his attempts years ago? Sure, there was no real threat of their destruction, but a little effort would have been nice). She was planning on a simple night to send her off into battle. But nothing ever goes as planned. If it did, she would never have taken that walk that led her to the college bar she found a distraught Grace outside of, she would not have been the other woman to Stan, and they probably would have married five or six years ago. Besides, the silence was too much right now, and she had nothing else to say.

"What if it doesn't work the way we want it to?"

The question seemed to come out of nowhere, and it took Grace aback. She knew exactly what Karen was talking about. The entire time they had been living together, she was under the impression that they would simply power through whatever adversity they were given. And Karen had never expressed any doubt about that. She turned her head to look at Karen, couldn't meet her eyes and her heart dropped at the thought of her worries. "I thought you weren't being cynical," she joked with a smile that Karen couldn't see but hopefully heart. "Don't think about that now, it'll work," she said, hoping to quell the anxiousness for the time being.

"We can't dismiss this, Gracie. Not now. Not when it's coming so quickly. Why are we thinking that it's going to be this effortless action? We just think that he's going to take it well and let me go, maybe help me move a few boxes out of the penthouse and call it a day. It's not going to be like that. We would have broken up years ago if that were the case. And we never talk about it. We don't. We don't have a plan."

"We didn't have a plan the entire time we've known each other, and we've made it through without any noticeable scars, so who says we couldn't skate through this without one?"

"Grace, please…"

It had never been like this, not in the time they had been living together, and not in the time since they traded the random hook-ups they had gotten used to for something a little more concrete. This was something that couldn't be erased by a few well-crafted words and hope. This was the reason Grace chose not to think about the end of their two weeks. And it was partly the reason she was so skeptical of Karen leaving in the first place. But because she never thought about it, she was never prepared for it. "I'm sorry," she whispered, but she wasn't entirely certain what for. For not being ready? For trying to make a joke, make Karen feel more at ease? For everything?

"I just wish I knew what to do," Karen murmured as she sat up, watching Grace quickly follow suit, "to defend myself when I tell him. I can't help but play it up in my mind, and I know I'm making it out to be worse than it will be." She failed to tell Grace that the unexpected encounter with Stan (which she never talked about) was fueling her sudden and vocal doubt. "But it's still going to be bad, and I still don't know how to handle it."

"Just tell him the truth. That's all anyone deserves."

"But what happens if the pressure of it all is too much for us? What happens if you suddenly decide that this isn't what you bargained for and you leave? You don't deserve to be dragged into this. I don't want to drag you into this. But I don't want to lose you, either. I love you too much."

"Look at me."Grace slid closer to Karen as she locked eyes. "Helping you get out of a situation that you don't want to be in is not going to make me lose you. I don't care what he says, and I don't care what he does. I've been so worried that you're eventually going to get bored with me and regret your decisions. But I never once considered bowing out, and I'm never going to."

Karen smiled at the reassurance, and hoped it masked the disappointment she had for herself, for not just telling Grace what she saw this morning. "And if comes at us with all he's got?" she asked meekly, already knowing the answer she was going to get.

"You're coming home to me in the end anyway, Karen. Whatever he decides to throw at you, at us, you're not going to be alone in facing it. As long as it means waking up next to you every morning, he can do whatever he wants. We'll get through it. I love you. I never doubted our strength for a second."

Karen pulled Grace's back into her, wrapped her arms around the red head as she rested her cheek against the fabric of Grace's dress. She could feel Grace's touch slide from her arms to her hands, the delicate touch of her skin, and she couldn't take it. The thrill of relief that there was no longer a need to speak washed over her, but it was quickly taken away by the hot sting of the tears she could not control, spilling over against her will.

She secretly hoped that they would fall silently, and against Grace's dress in a way that would leave her red-headed lover clueless to her pain.

* * *

><p>"I'm not coming home tonight. I wasn't planning on it before, and I'm not planning on it now. I just thought you should know in case you're waiting up. Not that you would, I just…I don't know, you have me so flustered right now. You should have told me exactly when you were coming home."<p>

"We finished up early, Karen, sue me. I shouldn't have to be the one explaining myself here, are you going to tell me what you're doing? How long has this been going on?"

"I am not going to do this right now, Stanley," she whispered fiercely into the phone. From her place on the living room couch, she could keep an eye on the bedroom and a sleeping Grace underneath the sheets. The last thing Karen wanted was for her to overhear this. She had never intended on keeping things from Grace, and yet here she was, two secrets in less than twenty-four hours. It was a personal record that she hated to hold. "I want to talk to you about this, but I don't want to do this in the middle of the night. It's not fair to either of us." She paused when she saw Grace turn in her sleep, held her breath until she watched the red head settle down again. "When can I see you tomorrow?"

"Just tell me when you want to meet, Karen. It's late. I want to go to bed."

"Central Park at five? I'm not going to take up too much of your time. I just want to tell you what's been going on. I want to tell you what I want."

"Fine. I'll be there." She hung up the phone after Stan agreed to see her, and she tiptoed back to bed. Grace was completely unaware of what happened, her peaceful sleep absolutely undisturbed by Karen's phone call. She thought about what Grace had told her. _You're coming home to me, anyway_.She wrapped her arms around the red head and pulled her to her chest. Grace didn't know a thing.

And as much as that killed her, Karen knew that's how it had to be.


	20. Softer

"_She's amazing in her own way  
>Always moving to a better place<br>She's amazing in her own way  
>Laughing, you won't get to her weaker traits<br>Now I'm getting a sick taste in my mouth  
>From the medicine that I can't keep down<br>You know, time heals nothing by itself  
>I see that ever so clearly now."<br>~Jimmy Eat World, "Softer"_

_April 1993_

She told Grace that she had to take care of a few things today. Nothing specific, she couldn't bear the thought of lying to her. But the look on the red head's face was kind and unassuming, the look on her face was trusting and bright, the look on her face was not what it should have been and it pierced through Karen deeper than telling her straight out what was going on probably would have.

And then she walked out the door and hailed a cab to Central Park, and she felt as though she couldn't breathe.

Karen thought back to the night she first met Stan, when everything about him was new and she had no idea where he would lead her. There was a time when he thrilled her almost as much as Grace did. Almost. But before Grace, she had never felt anything like when he took her hand, when he kissed her, when she put her trust in him. And when she found out he was married—that fateful night that made her life take a turn she in no way expected but ended up welcoming—she expected everything to end. But he vowed to divorce, he went through with his promises. And Karen couldn't shake the feeling that something better was waiting for her.

Yet she couldn't stay away from him, and as absurd as it sounded when she said it out loud, she feared that making that final cut would end up being the downfall of her Village bliss with Grace.

When she met the red head that would turn her life upside-down and back again, she was in the midst of becoming used to the lifestyle that Stan had lived for so long. And as time went by, she saw the old, almost bohemian, way of living slip away and she watched it, left in the distance without a care about the sacrifice. She was with someone who loved her, who she thought she loved. If she had to make a few changes to the way she lived her life, it would be worth it as long as she was with the person she was meant to be with. But now she knows that Stanley Walker is not the person she was meant to be with. The problem was, in order to get to Grace (and she knew with all her heart that Grace was meant for her), she had to become someone she never meant to transform into. Someone that Grace became enamored with.

Karen had to face it; part of the reason why the thought of the two of them together was so alluring in the first place was the fact that they came from two different worlds to meet at the college bar. It's always intoxicating to be in the presence of someone on a separate path, peeking over the side of the fence you never got to see before. And she saw the look in Grace's eyes when she told her stories, filled with excitement and the desire to know everything she possibly could. The thought had crossed her mind more than once that if Karen had on jeans and a sweater like the red head's, instead of the signaling outfit she wore that night they first met, They had always said that they needed nothing but each other. Karen was just afraid that Grace would get bored eventually if she tossed aside the lifestyle and the clothes she met her in.

But her fear didn't matter at all anymore. She had just come clean to Stan on the east side of Central Park.

She didn't tell him everything; she left out how long ago she met Grace, and the fact that Grace was a woman (she knew that that would be two blows to his ego, and she didn't want to be the cause of that). She merely said that it felt like he had been checked out of the relationship for some time now, she wasn't planning on it, all the cliché bullshit that the unfaithful feed to their original lovers. He looked broken down, but not surprised, and she wasn't sure if she was relieved at his reaction or crushed by it. She followed him out of the park—she knew he was headed toward the penthouse, she knew he was going to give it one last shot before calling it quits, and she knew that he wanted to do something like this in the privacy of his own home. Maybe she could get a couple of boxes out of the house in the process.

"I just don't know why you didn't tell me when I asked you in the first place," Stan said. His voice was softer than she remembered, and she couldn't tell if it was the situation or the fact that she hadn't heard it for nearly two weeks and her memory was faulty.

"Because I didn't want to say it in the heat of the moment. We were arguing when you first asked me. You deserved a thought out explanation, not one I had to come up with on the spur of the moment. It wouldn't have been fair to either of us if I had blurted it out that night. Not that what I've been doing has been fair to you at all. But I tried, Stan. I really did."

"There isn't anything I can do to try to save this?" It was the first time she could remember that he actually asked, that he showed any effort in trying. Maybe this was what he needed, this was what would light the fire under him and act on all the words he gave her years ago. It hurt to think that it took infidelity to make it happen, that she had to give her heart to someone else first. But even if he was willing to try now, would it be worth it?

She shook her head. "I don't think there is."

They reached the door of the Park Avenue building. Karen looked up and down, giving it one last study before she verbalizes her intent to leave it behind. She was never more ready than now. She opened her mouth to speak, but Stan beat her to it.

"I'll do whatever it takes," he said. "I don't want to lose you."

She looked into his eyes and she knew that he meant it. But she couldn't. She couldn't keep living a life she never intended to live in the first place. "Stan…"

But she couldn't get her sentence out before his lips caught her by surprise.

* * *

><p>She saw it but she still didn't believe it.<p>

Karen had told her that she had to take care of a few things today, and in Grace's mind, that meant that Karen would be going to the Park Avenue penthouse and coming back with another box or two. It would make sense; every other time those words had come out of Karen's mouth—granted, she only said it a handful of times—it meant the same thing. So why should today be any different? After work, Grace took a cab to Park Avenue hoping to help with her lover's belongings—the next morning after Karen first knocked on her door with the intention of staying for the long haul, they traveled together to the penthouse to grab some clothes and anything else Karen needed, and she remembered where Karen had once lived—and walked the blocks for a little while, hoping she would get enlightened as to what was so damn special about this part of Manhattan, why it seemed as though Karen was having such a hard time leaving.

Of course there was charm to the area. And it seemed like a place to travel for the novelty of it, to say that you've been there and you've seen how the other side lives. But as for the reasons to actually live there, she couldn't see them.

Grace walked the block of the penthouse, took a look around and knew that making a home with the woman in her heart was the right decision. They thrived in the Village, they could never last here. After a good look around the block, she returned her gaze straight ahead and saw Karen walking the opposite direction before stopping outside of the building, talking to a man she had never seen before. If it weren't for the serious look on her face, Grace would have come running to greet her. They would have walked into the building together, grab as many things as they could, as much as Karen needed, and hail a cab to wipe the slate clean. She walked closer, closer, each step eliminating the distance between the hardships and the greatness. Closer, closer.

But then she froze at the sight she had been given. She saw this man lean into her girlfriend, _her _girlfriend, and brush his lips against hers. What was worse was that Karen didn't pull away immediately. She jumped, she tensed up, obviously not expecting the kiss, but she soon warmed up to it, and relaxed against this man's body. It was then that she knew everything. This wasn't just any man.

This was Stan. It had to be.

She felt sick. She felt the guilt of everything she and Karen had ever done behind this man's back. She felt the anger over the fact that it was done to her. She could give Karen the benefit of the doubt, it could just be the first time that it happened. And, after all, Stan was the legitimate lover, not her. But after all of the complaints, all of the sad and lonely stories that Karen had spun over their time together, she never expected to see her act so lovingly towards him. Because immediately, before the kiss, she took an instant dislike towards him.

Suddenly Grace realized why Karen liked to be in control when it came to the touch. With her first look at Stan, she guessed that he was used to getting his way, and she could see all the things that Karen had complained about simply in his gait, in the way he presented himself. She watched as Karen pulled away, glanced in her direction and formed an "O" of surprise with her lips, her eyes wide like a deer in the headlights facing imminent disaster. Grace walked as if she were only a New Yorker in passing, and not someone whose trust had been shattered in the course of thirty seconds.

"Don't come home," she said as she passed by, softly so Stan would be completely oblivious to it, and quickened her pace so the piercing hot tears she was starting to feel would be out of sight.

But Karen heard it loud and clear.


	21. Quick Fix

"_I want something that lasts forever, you just want a quick fix.  
>I'm looking for something to blow my cover, you don't want to take a risk.<br>I guess this is goodbye.  
>I want something that lasts forever, you just want a shallow hit<br>I want someone that feels like home, when you were young you ran away.  
>I want to get back to the place I know, you just want to fake a name.<br>I guess this is goodbye.  
>I want someone that feels like home, you just want to play your games."<br>~The Daylights, "Quick Fix" (Album Version)_

_April 1993_

"You know, you should really think about moving uptown. Coming to meet you would be a lot easier if you just broke down and lived on the Upper West Side."

Grace turned to face him as she walked out of the kitchen with two coffee mugs in hand. She didn't want to be alone tonight, not after witnessing that kiss. With her thoughts starting to suffocate her, she picked up the phone and dialed Will's number, hoping he could be the one to save her. And when he said that Michael was working late tonight, he hung up the phone and hailed a cab to the Village. Now, she cracked a small smile—the biggest one she could manage—handed Will his coffee and sighed at his comment.

"I can't do it. I'm close to everything I love here. Well, the places, anyway. The Upper West Side to me is like what Times Square is to tourists; it's nice to visit, every once and a while, but there's no way in hell that you could stay there permanently. Besides, uptown Manhattan and I have had some bad history, as of late."

Silence. She couldn't go any further. Grace never told him about her relationship with Karen. She knew he probably wouldn't remember the Valentine's Day when they ran into her at the restaurant. But she did. She remembered the dread of having been found out, she remembered the reasons why she didn't want to tell him how she knew Karen. Maybe now that so many years have gone by since that night, since that fated Thanksgiving, it wouldn't be so bad if she let it slip. Maybe he would find it funny, how fate twists and turns like that.

"Something's weighing on your mind. I can feel it."

She didn't realize how long they had gone without speaking until he said that. She looked at him, but still kept quiet, not sure how to proceed. This was an opening; if she was going to tell him all about it, now would be the time. He continued. "I've been worried about you, Grace. I haven't heard from you in about two weeks. I've called, but you're never in, or if you are, you don't bother to pick up. And if it had to do with relationship issues, you would have told me, so of course I've been making whatever's up with you out to be worse than it probably is. I wish you would just tell me what's been going on."

This is it, Grace. Cleanse your soul. Tell the truth.

"I've sort of been seeing someone." She could see his lips curve into a smile, and it killed her. Before he could say anything else, before he could say how happy he was that she found someone, effectively making what she wanted to say harder to spill, she rushed to get her next sentence out. "But not anymore. Don't get too excited, I can see it in your eyes. It didn't really mean anything at all, I guess." She shivered at the sound of those words. But in effect, it was true.

"Well, what happened? You didn't love him?" Grace wanted to laugh at that question, Will automatically assuming that it was a man she was involved with. There was no reason to suspect otherwise; she gave no hint toward the Sapphic life she had been living for years, not out of shame and embarrassment, but out of protection for the women involved. She knew she was eventually going to have to tell someone, and that someone would likely by Will, but she never planned it out. She always thought that she would have plenty of time, and Karen's help, on her side. But things never worked out like she planned.

"Not exactly. She decided that she didn't want to leave her boyfriend."

If it were any other situation, the look on Will's face would have been priceless, something to have a small laugh over. The surprise in his eyes made her want to smile, but the situation she was about to fill him in on was far from happy. After the initial shock, Will got his wits together and spoke. "Don't get me wrong," he said softly, resting his hand on her shoulder. "It's not the fact that it's another woman. You're talking to me, you know I have nothing against it. It's the fact that she is already with another man. How did this even happen, Grace? It's not like you to willingly take the role of the other woman."

"You really want the truth?" she asked. Grace watched him nod. She sighed. "That Thanksgiving during college when you came out to me? I met her outside the bar that was near campus. I was going through our thing, she found out that he was married. He got a divorce from his wife eventually, not like it matters. She found me outside, we got to talking, she took me to another bar, we had a few drinks, and we ended up sleeping together. I was still really pissed at you, and…I don't know, Will, she made me feel so good. And I thought it was just going to be that one night, but there were a few years after that where we would hook up on and off. Then almost a year ago, we decided that we were going to try to make it work as a relationship. And it was perfect, Will, it really was. She spent nearly two weeks here, living with me while her boyfriend was away on business, and she was going to move in with me. She was going to leave him. But I saw her with him, and they kissed, and…" she started to tear up, her voice cracking slightly. "And it's over."

"Oh, sweetie…" Will pulled Grace into his arms. "You really loved her, didn't you?" He could feel Grace nodding against his chest, and he wrapped his arms tighter around her body.

"I was nothing more than a quick fix," she said, her voice slightly muffled by the fabric of Will's shirt. "Even before we decided to make it legitimate…well, as legitimate as we could make it. I never had her number until maybe five years after we met, so I always relied on her to call. And she would wait months sometimes to call. It was like she only fooled around with me to fix her own mood, and then she could go right back to her pretty little life with him. Stan." She felt his name spill from her lips, and it tasted horrible. "But that was all. I've been her quick fix for eight years."

She didn't want to think that that was Karen's motives for being with her. There was too much evidence against that. And she wanted nothing more than to make a lasting run at this. But then, she didn't expect Karen to openly show a love for Stan that supposedly wasn't there anymore. How long had that been going on, anyway? It was the first time Grace saw it, but that didn't mean it was the first time it happened while they were a couple. Maybe everything Karen had said was for show. Maybe all the things that she blamed on Stan weren't real to begin with. Or maybe they were exaggerated, so when Karen called Grace up and they slept together, or they kissed, or they acted like a couple, it wouldn't seem so scandalous. Maybe Grace really was a quick fix, something to make Karen feel better, something that was only called upon when there was nothing else to do. She hated to think that about Karen. But truthfully, it was valid. She was so willing, so capable to cheat on Stan.

What made Grace think that Karen wouldn't go behind her back?

"I know it's hard to hear," Will said after a few moments of silence, "but at least you found all of this out before she moved in. If she still loved this Stan guy, and you were living with her, it would have hurt more to find out further down the road than it hurts you now. You'll get back on your feet. You'll find someone else. You'll forget all about her. And I'll be there to help you along the way."

"I'm sorry," she said softly. She looked up at him, locked eyes, and saw the confusion in his face. "I like to think that I'm a good person. This didn't make me a good person. I almost caused the destruction of another relationship. And in the end, I have nothing to show for it. I'll be better next time."

Will lifted her chin and kissed her cheek. "It's not you. You are such a good-hearted person. It's her."

And as much as she didn't want to, Grace started to believe it.

* * *

><p>Will left, but the thoughts wouldn't walk out the front door. Will left, but she had to stay. Will left, but nothing changed. She was alone, she had lost control. Grace grabbed her purse and fished out a pack of cigarettes she kept around just in case Karen finished her last drag and had a craving afterward. She lit one up and watched the orange glow of the tip brighten as she inhaled, closed her eyes as she held the smoke in her lungs. The smell of cigarettes always made her think of Karen, and she knew that it always will. And even if she was betrayed by the woman she loved, at least the scent that slowly permeated the apartment would comfort her; this intangible thing could not hurt her.<p>

The phone rang, and she was in no hurry to pick it up. She figured it would be Will, checking up on her, just to see if she was okay tonight. After the third ring, she picked up the phone and put her cigarette out. "Will, you don't need to be concerned about me, I'm going to be fine tonight," she said, forgoing the greeting and going straight to the chase.

"Grace? I think you have me mistaken for someone else." Karen's voice was smaller than she had ever heard it. And she knew that she was partly to blame for it. But she didn't necessarily care.

"Why are you calling me?" she asked bitterly.

"Please. Can you come over? I want to tell you what was going on today. Stan…he's staying at a hotel tonight, thinking things over. I just want you to know the context of what you saw. Please. I don't know what else I can do."

Karen sounded completely helpless. Suddenly, Grace realized she had control, for what felt like the first time since they met. Control over their fate, control over the end. Control over whether or not the touch would be felt.

The touch. That was it.

"I'll be right over," she said evenly. Then she hung up the phone and got ready to see Karen for what she planned on being the last time.


	22. Tonight

"_Forget me if you can,  
>This I understand too well<br>A fail-to-make-you-mine  
>Heart attack and lime taste good<br>A thousand broken hearts  
>Littering your path through here<br>Tell me that you lied  
>Say you never think of me<br>But tonight, before you sleep,  
>There will be a you and me<br>And I hope I'm on your mind  
>When you wake."<br>~Easyworld, "Tonight"_

_April 1993_

_Do you trust me?_

It was a question that sealed her fate when she didn't expect it to. A question that thrilled her, a question that killed her. A question that set her spinning in a cycle of anticipation, longing and ecstasy only to go back again. Three-hundred-sixty degrees, the same terrain she had run around without getting tired, without becoming bored with the same sights. And, if that wasn't enough, she was the one to ask it first. She was the one that put all of this into motion. It was hard to believe, not because it was so long ago, but because in all the time she had spent with this woman, she never felt as if she was the one responsible for what was going on. It was all on the other, it had nothing to do with her. But it was her fault. She started it.

And she was going to end it, too. Tonight.

The late night breeze was cold as she reached her hand out for a cab. And as she slid into the car and reported the address to the driver, she wrapped her arms around the front of her waist and stared out the window. It wasn't fair. None of it was. It wasn't fair that she had to fall in love with someone so complicated. It wasn't fair that she had to keep coming back to this woman. It wasn't fair that as of this moment, Karen's kiss with Stan was the final word of their relationship. She wasn't going to let that happen. She was going to take back control of the situation. She was going to have the last say. It was the only way.

The blocks raced past her as she sat safely in the back seat, and she wondered how long she would be able to keep up her nerve; the initial anger from Karen's audacity to make the phone call had faded into something that held nothing but sadness. From the moment she hung up the phone, she was determined for there to be a Karen and Grace tonight, one final time before she turned her back and didn't think twice. And the only way her frustrated and frantic mind could think of making that happen was to do the one thing she couldn't in eight years. She would take control. She would give Karen the touch that had captivated her for so long. She wanted one beautiful memory to end their run on; she did not want to look back on their time together and only see Stan leaning into Karen for a kiss she was never meant to see. The thought that so many other hearts had to be broken over the years for her, only to see the relationship dissolve anyway crushed her. The thought of never going back formed a lump in her throat that she couldn't help but notice. But it had to be done, even though she though all the hardships and the years of waiting would finally pay off by now.

It's funny how wrong a person can actually be.

_Do you trust me?_ The question was ringing in her mind, louder and louder, and she couldn't take it. She couldn't remember a lot of things from that first night. She couldn't remember the clothes she wore, or the look in Karen's eyes when they first met, or what made her get in that damn cab in the first place. But she remembered that question coming out of her mouth as they moved closer towards each other. She remembered being so strong in her convictions that night that _Do you trust me?_ and what came after it seemed like the best idea in the world.

And then she remembered Karen asking the same question years later. She remembered the smirk on her face and in her voice as she recalled such a pivotal moment in their connection, and they barely knew each other then. That was how much power they had once had over each other. Say four words, get her in bed. _Do you trust me?_ She used to trust Karen, although now, there didn't seem to be a reason. She used to trust herself, but she wasn't sure why.

But it didn't matter much, anyway. She was already in the cab, the cab was already slowing down on Park Avenue. There was no turning back now. Pay the fare, walk inside, ring the bell, meet your fate.

The air in the lobby of the building was oppressive and she instantly knew that she was not meant to be here. But if she felt that way inside, she let the others walking in and out of the door think that she had every right to stay. Each step closer to Karen's penthouse screamed about the end, and for a moment, Grace convinced herself that if she didn't go through with it, it wouldn't have to end, that if she waited long enough, the memory of Karen's kiss with Stan would disappear and it would be as though it never happened. Nothing but wishful thinking, asking for things that could not be produced.

Grace got to Karen's door and hesitated a moment. She knew that she would probably get bombarded by explanations, hastily concocted statements to try and make her feel better about the day, words that she didn't necessarily want to hear. She didn't want any of it. She knew what she saw, her eyes did not deceive her. All she wanted was a night to give Karen what she had always wanted to give, to not leave any desires unfulfilled, before she turned to leave. She rang the doorbell.

Karen looked broken when she first answered the door, the softness in her eyes having been replaced with a hard and cold gaze that she did not want to have. But as soon as she saw the red head on the other side of the door, as soon as it registered why the doorbell had rung, a small light of hope tried to shine through the cracks. "Grace, you have no idea how much I…"

"Don't say anything," she said as she placed a finger against Karen's lips. "Please…just don't talk. I don't want to talk right now. I can't." She dropped her hand so she could weave her fingers with Karen's, and she led her up the stairs, hoping that the door to a bedroom—or really, any room with a comfort level, at this point—would be open, so it would look like she knew what she was doing. She couldn't help but be taken back to that first night they had together, that snap decision to take advantage of her college friend's empty apartment. Barging into a room that she hoped would contain a bed and leave her unembarrassed. Grace spotted a bed on the other side of an open door on the second floor, and gave Karen a small push, letting her land on the mattress.

Slowly, Grace started to take off her clothes at the foot of the bed, a small and sad strip tease for the woman who broke her heart. She let the fabric fall to the floor around her before she climbed onto the mattress, straddling Karen's hips, and plunged her lips into her lover's. She opened her eyes for a moment to see, out of the corner of her eye, Karen's hands going for her skin. Grace grabbed her wrists and thrust them down on the bed.

"Don't," she said sternly, locking eyes. She couldn't read the look on Karen's face, couldn't tell what was going on behind the eyes she at one point could not take her gaze away from, but watched as she nodded. This wasn't like any other encounter. Everything changed. And if Grace didn't believe it before, she certainly believed it now: it was not her fault.

Piece by piece, Grace slipped Karen's clothing off of her skin, kissing the flesh that had been newly revealed against the blue-black night. God, her skin was so soft. Had it always been this way? Had she always been so delicate? She brushed her lips against Karen's collarbone, her chest, her stomach. In any other light, on any other day, it would have looked like a normal night between two passionate women.

And then, finally, the touch she was so afraid to give had come over Karen in a wave of euphoria that Grace had not anticipated. She heard Karen's sighs grow louder and louder, and Grace couldn't help but smile against the woman's skin, with the knowledge that she and she alone was the one to make this happen. This is what she had been missing out on all these years. It was one thing to be on the receiving end. But to be the one responsible for something so seismic was a completely different feeling entirely, so new to her.

Karen was right. You really could get off on control alone.

But then one look back at her made Grace freeze. She really couldn't tell you what made her decide to stop so abruptly. Maybe it was a harsh satisfaction in the fact that Karen would not be fulfilled that night. Maybe it was the deep sadness of it all that told her that this wasn't the way to go, and the sooner she stopped, the better. Maybe it was the premonition that one or two years from now, she would look back on this night and think herself stupid. Maybe it was something she wouldn't be able to understand. But whatever the reason, she pulled away against Karen's pleas of "Don't stop," and frantically pushed herself off of the mattress. She looked at her bare body before returning her gaze to Karen, wide-eyed and full of disbelief at what she was doing.

"What's wrong? Why did you stop?" Karen asked softly. "Come back to me."

Grace hugged her arms across the front of her waist and averted her eyes. "I just can't. I can't do this." And she knew with those few words, she covered everything she had been feeling for the past twenty-four hours. She couldn't pretend that everything was okay. She couldn't hear Karen's explanations without wanting to burst out into otherwise unacceptable behavior. She couldn't finish what she had started tonight. And she couldn't act as though her world was not shattered.

_Do you trust me?_ Of course not. Not anymore. She felt like she couldn't trust anybody. She wanted to badly to demand from Karen the truth, that she lied about wanting her. But she couldn't get the words out, and she wasn't sure she wanted to hear it anyway.

Without another word, Grace got dressed and looked at Karen, who finally realized what was going on. But she would stay silent. She would let Grace go. Because she knew she could not change the red head's mind, as much as she so desperately wanted to. Grace backed out of the room with her eyes on Karen until she was in the hallway, and she walked down the stairs. She took as long as she could, thinking she would hear Karen's footsteps following her, trying to keep her from leaving. But there was nothing but silence. And Grace walked out the door for the last time. She walked out onto Park Avenue, extended her hand and waited for a pair of headlights.

She didn't let the tears spill from her eyes until she was safely in the cab, riding away from Park Avenue.


	23. Poison & Wine

"_I wish you'd hold me when I turn my back  
>The less I give, the more I get back<br>Your hands can heal, your hands can bruise  
>I don't have a choice, but I still choose you<br>Oh, I don't love you, but I always will"  
>~The Civil Wars, "Poison &amp; Wine"<em>

_November 1998_

"Gracie, it's me…"

She got this message about a year after their last encounter, about a week after she started dating Danny. She had started to forget about Karen, about everything that the woman meant, and her life started to move forward. But then one night, as she got home from drinks with Danny, she pushed the play button on her answering machine and heard that all too familiar voice. She stopped it before it could get past those three words, fearful of the repercussions of hearing the message in its entirety. But she didn't have the heart to erase it, to rewind the cassette so that it would record someone else's voice over Karen's. Instead, she pulled the tape out of its holder and replaced it with a blank one, putting Karen's voice in safekeeping for four years. But those three words were enough to make her less than enthused with Danny.

Grace powered through her relationship with the man, whether it was an attempt to spite her former lover, or a genuine love for Danny, and there were rounds of time when he was all she needed. But eventually, it all came back to Karen, it all came back to her voice. And when Karen walked into the office two months ago, asking for sanctuary, Grace couldn't find it in her to refuse her, and the thoughts of her former lover came back full force, every day. She was convinced that that aided in her eventual break-up with Danny. But she would never admit it to him, and for a while, she didn't admit it to herself. Until now.

She had to face it: the love she had for Karen had never died. She just packed it in storage and kept it away for a little while, like she did with the belongings Karen left behind in her old Village apartment and never came around to retrieve (for which she was relieved, especially after the dramatic way Grace decided to end things once and for all). And now, all she had left were a box of books, some clothing, and this message. She never got past those three words. She was never ready before. And even though anxiousness tried to get her to press the stop button on the answering machine, she willed herself to let it play.

"I don't even know if this is still your number. For all I know, I'm about to pour my heart out to some stranger who unknowingly stole the very last part of you that I had. But I need to say this now, and if it doesn't get to you, then at least I tried. I know it's been a long time since we last saw each other. That night is still etched in my mind and it kills me to think about it. But you never gave me a chance to explain what you saw, and I feel like you deserve to know the truth. I have no reason to lie to you, especially not now, not after all this time apart, so please take this as pure honesty. I went to Central Park to meet Stan to tell him about us. And I did. And he tried to make a small effort to fix things entirely too late, an effort I refused. When we got to the penthouse, I was about to tell him that I would start moving my things out, but then he kissed me. And he took me by surprise, and it took me a while to respond, but when I did, I pulled away immediately. I didn't want it. Then I saw you. You have to believe me, Grace, all I ever wanted was for you to be with me. Now I have this ring on my finger. He gave it to me tonight, asked me to spend my life with him. I don't really want it, but I didn't know what else to do. I already lost you. I just don't want to be alone. I'm not looking to get anything out of this. I'm not hoping that you'll call if you hear this, because you probably won't. You probably moved on and I wouldn't blame you. I just thought you deserved to know. So…there it is. Goodbye, Grace."

And then she was gone, a rush of nostalgia followed by infinite waves of silence. The heaviness of the air in the room was suffocating and she couldn't concentrate on anything other than what she had just heard. She knew that Karen eventually married Stan; if she missed the initial wedding announcement, then filling out the paperwork when Grace hired her and seeing that she now called herself "Karen Walker" certainly clued her in. But to hear it in Karen's voice, that she had Stan's engagement ring on her finger, was more than she could bear; it was worse than seeing the changed name, worse than hearing through word of mouth about a wedding that would not have happened if Grace had simply let Karen speak that night. And then that goodbye over a piece of machinery. A more proper goodbye that she was capable of giving at that time. To be honest, it hurt. It hurt to know that she had robbed Karen of something so simple. She ended up getting more for giving the woman next to nothing.

Karen was right about one thing in the message: she had no reason to lie to Grace after not speaking for a year. It wouldn't have done either of them any good. And Grace knew that the story Karen told over the machine would make sense; even though a relationship was on its last legs, the ones involved would still try what they could to make it work. It was instinct, to try to keep something that you've known for so long when you're the one worried about its destruction (then why did Grace feel so defeated five years ago?). It was entirely plausible for Stan to have given her a kiss that she didn't want. And if that was true, Grace had thrown away her relationship with Karen for absolutely nothing.

"Fuck," she whispered, before throwing herself back on the mattress. She felt the hot sting of saline at her eyes, felt a tear roll down. "Fuck," she said again as she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

It was five years. Five years that she couldn't get back. Five years to build a home, five years to build a life. Five years to make the most of their situation, the Village apartment, the tiny bed. Instead, she used those five years to do her best to forget about Karen and find another love that couldn't compare, she moved in with him, and started her own design business while wishing she could share it with someone who really cared about it (of course there was Will, but he was not the kind of someone she was thinking of). All this time, she tried to convince herself that she didn't love Karen, not truly. She tried to convince herself that it was a fluke, an eight year fluke that would not let her go. She did not love her, she couldn't.

But there was no use in trying. Grace knew she would always love Karen.

Not that it did much good now. It was more of a ghost at this point, constantly hovering over her, following her wherever she went, taunting her with what she once had and laughing at her because she couldn't get it back. Five years is a long time. If she wanted to get it back, she would have listened to the message when she first got it, she would have picked up the phone, she would have met with Karen, she would have told her how miserable she was without her. She would have let Danny off the hook without any repercussions, saying that he was a nice guy but the date that they had made her think that she wasn't the right girl for him.

It would have been so much easier. They wouldn't have had to go through four years of mediocrity. They would have saved themselves so much trouble. They could have tried to find happiness in places they haven't tried before. It wouldn't have left the dark mark on the both of them that she had caused.

Two months ago, she left Danny at the altar. She wasn't quite sure what motivated her to say yes when he proposed; she never saw herself marrying this man, and they were never on the same level. She was surprised that she had stayed with him this long. But he was the only one around, and no one else seemed interested. And there was no one to intervene (well. Will was there. But again, it wasn't the right kind of intervention). But with the ring on her finger, Karen's eye went directly to the band on her left hand, and she asked to see it. And god, that touch on her hand. It burned her and bruised her in a way that was not physical, but completely emotional. Karen congratulated her like it was something so ordinary, and she could feel the tears, but would not let them show. And if she wouldn't let herself think about her past, that touch opened the gate, to the point that she couldn't stop thinking about it. When she looked at Danny, she saw Karen. And she knew that that was no way to start a new life with someone you were supposed to be committed to forever.

If it weren't for that touch, Karen's delicate hand on her small ring, Grace would probably have been sleeping in bed next to Danny as a married woman tonight. But it came back to Karen. It always came back to Karen. And at the rate she was going, it will always come back to Karen. The cycle she could not break, no matter how hard she tried. She hated to think what that meant for her in the long run. The things that Karen said in their time together, the good time together, had tasted like wine when they were said, but the aftertaste…it had to have been what poison tasted like. Because it certainly poisoned her days without Karen. Constantly thinking about what could have been if she had just let the woman speak. Losing herself in the past. Crying silently and alone about the past.

What the hell was she doing? Why wasn't she acting? She never spoke about these things out loud, let alone talk to Karen about it. It was why their working environment held an awkward air about it. They went on without a word, and that was no way to heal their wounds (that is, if Karen still had any over this. She couldn't speak for her, but Grace certainly still had some). The only way that they would be able to get past this was to talk it out, once and for all. Maybe that would break the cycle.

Or it could spin her around faster. But up until now, Grace acted as though she had a choice in the matter. She acted like she had the control that she thought she had that last night. It turned out that she didn't have control then, and she didn't have it now. She didn't have a choice.

She knew what she had to do.

She picked up the phone by her bed and dialed, listened to the rings as they kept coming. It was late, she knew that. They were probably asleep, couldn't hear the phone. She wouldn't be surprised if no one picked up. A little disappointed maybe, but she could always try again once the sun rises. At this point, she didn't even care if he was the one to pick up the phone. Karen worked for her now; she could probably sell this as some late-night emergency regarding one of her projects. Just someone, please, pick up the damn phone.

"Hello?"

"Karen? Did I wake you up?" Grace couldn't tell if the sound of her voice was because of the weariness of sleep or from the salt of sadness.

"No, no, you're fine." Was that a smile in her voice? She could only imagine.

"Listen, would you be able to meet me?" Grace asked, and she hoped that her action would count for something.


	24. It's Been A Long Time

"_Home is not just where I am anymore  
>I know how to get there and it's where I want to be<br>It's where the river kisses the ocean  
>Where I feel small, I feel blessed, and I feel like me<br>It's been a long, long time, yeah, it's been a long time  
>Long, long time<br>'Cause I ain't no good to you sober  
>If I just medicate my life<br>So I'm asking for some help here  
>Help me to get level, would you help me to get right?<br>It's been a long time."  
>~Melissa Ferrick, "It's Been a Long Time"<em>

_November 1998_

She peeked in on him from the doorway, saw him fast asleep on his usual side of the bed in the blue-black night, and wished that every night could be this peaceful. She thought that when she entered Grace's office two months ago, it would offer her some sort of serenity, whatever she could get; it wasn't the ideal situation, especially considering their history, but it could at least get her out of the penthouse. But the arguing got worse, until Stan reached the boiling point when he finally found out exactly who she was working for. She slipped it in during the middle of an argument that seemed to have thirty different points to it, said it to spite him, to see what he would do. They hadn't talked about her infidelity since that April day in Central Park. And she knew it would sting him.

She just didn't realize that he wouldn't let it go. And they reached their breaking point.

Karen walked over to Stan's office, sat down in front of the desk, and took another look at the divorce papers resting against the wooden surface. Stan gave them to her this afternoon in silence, no bitter words, no explanations. Not that she needed an explanation. She knew that it would happen eventually, and truth be told, she was surprised that it took this long to put their distaste in writing. And Karen thought she would be the one to cave in first. At least Stan had one last surprise up his sleeve, coming about ten years too late and in the form of an ending. She found a pen on the desk, signed where she was supposed to sign, and rested her head in her hands.

It took him ten years to finally marry her, ten years for him to give her what she thought she wanted. But it only took him three years to realize he regretted it. He wasn't like her. She regretted it the moment she said yes to his proposal. But there was no other way to go. So she settled.

When Grace left the penthouse that April night, Karen had to take a moment to absorb what had just happened. And when she did, she realized that this was Grace's form of closure for something she wasn't completely certain of in the first place. She realized that she wasn't supposed to call, although she desperately wanted to. And instead of fighting for what should not have been lost to begin with, she surrendered to Grace's unspoken wishes. She fell asleep in the bed that she never left, not caring about her clothes strewn along the floor, pulling the sheets over her bare skin. And when she woke up, she thought that the events of the previous day had been a dream. Just a horrible dream that her mind cruelly concocted. Grace wasn't there. She couldn't find Stan. If she went out into the day, if she rode down to the Village, she and Grace could pick up wherever they left off. She had gotten dressed and raced down the stairs, like a child at Christmas.

When she hit the ground, she saw Stan walking in through the front door, and heard him say, "I think I'm ready to talk about our options now." She knew he meant whether or not they should stay together, but it was the way he said it that disgusted her. Our options. Like this was a business deal that was going horribly awry. At that moment, she realized that the previous day hadn't been a dream, and that Grace was really gone. And she tried to forget about the red head that had enchanted her for eight years. And it almost worked.

Almost.

About a year after Grace's exit, Stan did the one thing Karen never thought would happen. It was at night, maybe so that the diamond would have a brighter shine against moonlight. It was in the penthouse, maybe so that it could be a more private occasion. It was understated, maybe because he finally realized that she didn't rely on the extravagant for her happiness. And Karen was left underwhelmed. Still, there was nobody else asking, showing an interest, so she said yes. Not exactly how she pictured that moment back in 1985.

That night, when Stan was asleep, Karen was left with her mind running full speed. She thought of Grace and the new life they were supposed to start together. She thought of the Village apartment, the bed she joked she would sleep underneath, the vase full of red roses. Her smile, her laugh. The way her voice sounds just before she leaned in for a kiss. And Karen couldn't help herself. She got out of bed that night, moved out of Stan's earshot and dialed the number that she had known so well, taking a chance. "Gracie, it's me…" It was something that was now in a dark corner of her mind, a corner she never visited, but it was there, waiting for its opportunity to leap out into the light.

It's been four years since that message. An engagement, a marriage, a divorce. And she still felt like she was just left in the middle of the night by a red head who didn't have the whole story. It's amazing how fast time flies by.

Karen got up from her seat and walked out of the room, down the stairs. It wasn't as if she didn't try with Stan. She was like any wife trying to make a marriage work; she did what she could to make it as smooth a ride as she possibly could. She couldn't tell if Stan was doing the same. Sometimes it was just him; sometimes his efforts weren't as obvious as the average person's. But sometimes he just didn't try. And Karen was pretty sure that this was a situation in which he didn't try. She hated to think that about him, and there were instances where he made sure that something positive came out of their relationship. But the few times that he did weren't enough to keep the marriage afloat for more than three years.

This wasn't home. Home was the Village five years ago. Home was in those red roses. Home was Grace. It always would be, and because of her inability to speak up when she had the chance—it wasn't even an inability, face it Karen, it was a choice, it was your choice—she could never go back home.

Karen always thought of what happened between she and Grace as her fault. Grace was the one who said not to talk. Grace was the one to give off the impression that once she left the penthouse, she would leave Karen's life for good. But that wasn't an unbreakable rule. Karen could have easily told her at any time. But she kept her mouth shut and watched Grace slip from her fingers, breaking both of their hearts in ways that didn't need to be. She could make Grace out to be the bad one—she did, after all, make the assumption that killed them without wanting an explanation of any kind. She could even make Stan out to be the bad one in this particular situation—he was, after all, the one to plant the kiss on her lips that started this whole things. But she should have had the resources to control it. And she couldn't.

There was no one to blame but herself.

She found ways of coping that weren't the healthiest mechanisms in the world, but they worked. And that's all that mattered. She smoked more than she used to, just to keep herself calm. The nicotine coursing through her gave her that peace she couldn't find anywhere else, the tip of the lit cigarette glowing like an orange beacon that told her that an easier go of things was not far away. She started to spend Stan's money more than she usually did, without his knowledge. It was therapeutic in a way, to take something away from him without him knowing about it, just like he took Grace away from her before she could make it right. But there was a difference. Stan made more money in a year that Karen had ever seen before in her life. He wasn't going to miss a few thousand if she decided she needed to feel a little bit better about her circumstances. But whereas Stan didn't miss the money she took, she missed everything about Grace. And now, as she padded her way to the kitchen, Karen grabbed a bottle of wine and poured herself a glass, indulging in the one coping mechanism she had come to rely on the most.

The drinks started to add up. She could drink more than most, sure, but she never used to make a habit of it. She didn't intend on making a habit of it, but good intentions rarely ever got her anywhere in life. She didn't try it, and she didn't notice until she was too far in. She hated it, but could not stop it. She realized that no one else would help her medicate. At one point, Grace would have. At one point, Grace did. And when Grace couldn't do it anymore, she turned to other methods. Every once in a while, Karen wished that Grace would be able to help her again (and, in essence, she did, by giving her a place to hide out masquerading as a job). But she figured those days were long gone.

The phone's ring pierced through her train of thought, but it took her a moment to jump to pick it up. She thought that it might wake Stan up, but before long, she realized she didn't care if it woke Stan up. Stan could fend for himself. She was in no hurry to walk over to the phone hanging on the wall.

"Hello?"

"Karen?" Her voice, late at night, brought back so much that she almost hung up, for fear of breaking into a tearful nostalgia (it was crazy; she had gone so many days listening to that voice in the past two months, but suddenly, in the blue-black night, she couldn't handle it). But she kept the phone to her ear and willed herself to listen to Grace on the other end. "Did I wake you up?"

"No, no, you're fine," she said. She looked to the center of the kitchen table to the vase with a single red rose. After Stan gave her the divorce papers in the afternoon, she couldn't help but think of Grace, for whatever reason, for every reason. And she did the only thing she thought made sense to do: she went to the nearest market, bought the flower, and put it in a spot that she could walk by frequently, whenever she needed it.

"Listen, would you be able to meet me?"

Karen could hear the shakiness in her voice, the little quiver that let her know that the red head's guard was down. She wondered what brought Grace to this. It couldn't have been Danny; Grace broke off their engagement about thirty minutes before it was too late, and to Karen's knowledge, there wasn't anybody else at the moment, although it wasn't like Grace would tell her if there was. Still, she couldn't shake the things that she felt. If circumstances have changed in the years that separated their relationship from now, Karen's heart stayed in the same place. It didn't matter if Grace's wasn't. She took a deep breath before she spoke.

"Tell me where to go."


	25. I Will Follow You Into The Dark

"_Love of mine, someday you will die  
>But I'll be close behind<br>I'll follow you into the dark  
>No blinding light or tunnels to gates of white<br>Just our hands clasped so tight  
>Waiting for the hint of a spark<br>If Heaven and Hell decide that they both are satisfied  
>Illuminate the 'no's on their vacancy signs<br>If there's no one beside you when your soul embarks,  
>Then I'll follow you into the dark."<br>~Death Cab for Cutie, "I Will Follow You into the Dark"_

_November 1998_

There was a time when she didn't think she would be here, when this place was just a twinkle of a dream that she thought would never become a reality. For a long time, she thought that she would be constantly working for someone, never being able to branch out into her own. But here she was on Lafayette Street, in an office that sees a fair amount of success. Grace had climbed through the open window and was sitting on the fire escape, wrapped her sweater tight around herself to keep away as much as the November chill as possible. She had found a pack of cigarettes and a lighter in Karen's desk (on a whim, she decided that this moment called for one and knew that Karen had to have a pack in there somewhere), and lit one as soon as she sat down outside, embracing the smoke that always reminded her of the woman who now spends her days sitting in near silence across the room from her. She let out a deep sigh before taking another drag.

This wasn't going to be easy. She knew this.

Karen walked into the office and was surprised by how different it looked in the blue-black night. She had never been here past five o'clock in the afternoon, and she wondered if it was the time of day or the situation that made the state of the place give her a chill (oh, come on, Karen, you know the reason; you know it's because of her, you know it's because you don't know what her motives are). Her desk, while sparse, looked like it had been shuffled around a bit, something that she couldn't remember doing, but something that she didn't worry too much about. For a moment, she thought that she had arrived first, that Grace was still on her way. Karen knew that the red head had first moved in with that guy, Danny (it never felt like a right fit to her, but what did she know? She was merely a former lover, who could get a little bitter when she wanted to), before moving further uptown recently to live with her best friend. But it was odd to her to see this place completely empty, without another soul inhabiting it.

It was almost as if she shouldn't be here.

She turned to walk out the door, certain that Grace had decided that their meeting tonight wasn't a good idea and backed out, but as soon as she had her hand on the doorknob, she heard a faint cough from the window. A few steps forward, and Karen could see Grace on the fire escape steps with a cigarette between her fingers, elegantly framed by the night. She walked slowly, quietly, so she wouldn't disturb Grace until she had to. God, she looked beautiful. She hated when those thoughts would creep in during the daytime, when they were working and they didn't talk about anything outside of design. But she figured it was a special exception tonight. She could let one slip. She walked closer and closer to the window until she was in the red head's earshot.

"Can I bum one?" It had been thirteen years since she asked Grace that question, and to be honest, she forgot exactly what her first words to the red head were. Even so, the sentence seemed to carry some weight, held a significance that she might now have noticed right away.

Grace jumped at the voice, and when it registered that it belonged to Karen, she handed her the pack and the lighter. "It's been a while since I've wanted one. I need to get used to it again. Take them. They're yours anyway," she said with a blush, knowing she had just revealed that she stole them in the first place. "Sorry about that," she added as an afterthought.

Karen smiled. "It's okay." She maneuvered herself through the window and sat on the fire escape steps above Grace as she grabbed a cigarette and lit it. She was sitting in a way so that Grace could lean back against her body if she wanted to. She knew it probably wouldn't happen, but part of the reason was for the possibility. The other part was the fact that it might be easier to talk to Grace if she couldn't directly face her, if she only had to look at her back. It was a cheap move, but she found comfort in it.

"I thought that this would be better. I didn't want to chance waking Will up, especially since it's so late. I'm sorry about that too, by the way. I didn't mean to call so late. I just couldn't sleep, and then these thoughts wouldn't let go of me. So I'm sorry. About a lot of things, actually."

Silence. Karen looked down at the red rose in her hand. She had taken it out of the vase right after Grace had called, entirely out of instinct, and when she climbed through the window, she was careful not to let Grace see it, because she wasn't absolutely sure that she wanted to give it to her anyway. She always associated the flower with the red head, and she knew that if she gave it to her now, it may not be entirely appropriate. But she didn't know what else to do to break the silence that had suddenly become thick and impossible to bear. Karen reached over and held the rose in front of Grace for what felt like an eternity.

Without warning, she felt a tug on the stem from Grace's touch, and she released the flower into the grasp of the red head. She just wished she could see if Grace was smiling when she held it. "Sort of a peace offering, I guess," she said softly.

"What for?" Grace asked.

"I'm not quite sure yet. For everything, maybe. The fact that I didn't tell you I was going to meet Stan that day"—_that day_, because they didn't need a further explanation—"the fact that I couldn't tell you what really happened. The fact that I let you go."

"That wasn't your fault. It was mine. I told you not to talk. If you would have explained yourself, I wouldn't have listened anyway, I was in a really bad headspace that night. That's also what I wanted to apologize for. You know, besides stealing your cigarettes." Grace let a little smile play across her face as she said that. Karen couldn't see it, but she heard it, and she loved it. Grace sighed, and realized that she couldn't postpone this anymore. "I got your message," she said.

"My message?" Karen asked. "But I haven't called you recently. Anything I need to tell you, I usually tell you in the office." _Usually_. There were other things that Karen needed to tell her. But the time has long since passed for her to say it unharmed.

Grace tried not to get down over the fact that Karen didn't remember; it was four years ago, after all, and Grace could not remember many of the things she did four years ago. She tried to refresh Karen's memory. "It was a year after I…you know." She stopped for a moment, knowing that she, if not both of them, needed a moment to recover, as if the mere mention of that night was a massive blow to their hearts. "You said that you had gotten engaged to him in your message. You told me what really happened, what I didn't see. I just never had the heart to listen to it until tonight. I don't even know what got me thinking about it. A mixture of things, I guess. If I had just listened when you tried to explain…If I had listened to that message when I first found it…" She couldn't finish. She didn't have it in her.

Karen knew in an instant what Grace was talking about as soon as she said "It was a year after…" And in that instant, she felt the lump in her throat, the tears starting to well up. She didn't realize this is what Grace wanted to see her about. And she was truly at a loss for words. She hadn't thought about that message for four years, but still knew it so well. One last plea to turn their circumstances around, wording it in a way that didn't say it outright. She remembered how broken she felt when Grace never called her back, even though she never expected a response. And she was too caught up in the memory to respond. But it didn't matter anyway. Grace did it for her.

"I don't know what to do anymore, Kare." Her voice was starting to crack, Karen could tell. But it didn't stop her. "I'll have bouts where I'm perfectly fine. But something eventually sets me off, and it always brings me back to you. Always. I can't help it. I feel like my heart is going to follow you until I die. It already has for thirteen years. And I wanted to help you when you asked for the job, but I have to look at you every day, and it kills me. I just wish…I don't know, I just sometimes wish that we could wipe the slate clean. Not to forget everything, but to make it okay."

Karen let out a soft laugh. "Wipe the slate clean," she said. "Guess I'm starting with my marriage. I signed divorce papers tonight." With that, Grace turned around so that she could face Karen. Tears stained the red head's cheeks, but Karen didn't point it out, because she knew that she was going to look the same shortly. "He gave them to me, but if he hadn't have done it, I would have. I never loved him. Not like I love you. And I still love you." She didn't mean for that to spill from her lips. But it was out there now, and she feared the repercussions. She kept talking, not ready to hear Grace's response just yet. "I married him so I wouldn't be alone, because when I was alone, I missed you. And that didn't even work out. Even when I was married, I missed you, and now that it's over, I miss you more. I'd follow you if you wanted me to. But so much time has gone by that I could never let you know."

Grace gave her a half-smile. "So why are we torturing ourselves? Why are we making it so hard? I've wanted nothing more than to wrap your arms around me. I've wanted nothing more than to know where I stand. I miss you. All of you. I don't think I can take much more of this if nothing changes."

Karen reached down, wiped a stray tear from Grace's cheek. She wanted so desperately for so long to get back to the way things were. It's all she's ever wanted. If you were going to make the move, Karen, the time was now. "If I ask you to take my hand, would you trust me?"

It was something she had been dying to ask. She didn't care if it was cutting to the chase, she didn't care if it was better to wait. She waited for too damn long to waste time now.

Without hesitation, Grace slid her hand into Karen's. It was a touch she missed, a touch she still couldn't get enough of. "I always have." She kept her grasp on Karen's hand as she turned around and leaned her back against Karen's body. Five years away from that warmth, but it was just as perfect as she remembered. This is how it should have been all along. It shouldn't have taken so long to get back to this. But that was the way they were, it's the way it always went. "If we're really going to do this," Grace started, "what's our plan?"

It made Karen smile to hear Grace say that. "Aside from moving out of Stan's house? I just plan on making up for lost time. Giving you everything you deserve, and everything I couldn't in those in-between years." She kissed the crown of Grace's head before resting her cheek on it. "I'm not going to let go this time."

Grace moved in closer. She believed Karen's promise. Nothing was ever certain. But things were different this time. There weren't complications. There wasn't going to be any sneaking around. It would be easier. It would finally be their time. "Just one thing," she said as she started to smile. "Please don't go broke by the red roses."

Karen laughed with her whole body and squeezed Grace's hand. "I'll try not to," she said. "I love you, Grace."

The red head looked up, planted a kiss on Karen's cheek. "I love you, too."

And they stayed still for a moment, in the warmth of their silence, taking everything in.


End file.
